Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   redirect to Kingdom of Galicia. There is little support in this discussion for keeping this article, but after that things become a bit more murky. A strong minority favors outright deletion, a larger plurality favors redirecting, but is split on the appropriate target, while a single editor favors keeping the article. I believe that the proper reading of consensus is to redirect, as the option that is best supported, while coming closest to effecting the desire of those favoring delete. I have pointed to redirect to Kingdom of Galicia as being the best supported by a slight margin, but editors should feel free to re-target the article in there is agreement to do so. Xymmax So let it be written   So let it be done  14:30, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal

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No such kingdom existed. The article claims on no authority that one ruler, Garcia II, had the title "King of Galicia and Portugal". The county of Portugal did form part of Garcia's Galician kingdom, but reliable sources don't refer to it like this, and it is unclear why they would. Even if it turns out that some primary source says he used this title, I'd suspect it is probably an inaccuracy based on the emergence of a Kingdom of Portugal in the following century, and at any rate this wouldn't justify a separate wiki article. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 08:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * No reliable sources to indicate notability, or even if it existed. . Aiken &#9835; 09:19, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep Your search was for the exact phrase "Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal", so the return you got was higher than my expectations would have been. A search of a few keywords  turns up | this from the Cambridge University Press, and | this and | this and those are just three examples.  If there are reliable sources that suggest that "no such kingdom existed", we need to add them to the article. Mandsford (talk) 13:04, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Mandsford, no-one is denying that the Galician monarch ruled the county of Portugal for a time, but that doesn't mean there was such a kingdom as the Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal ... no more than there was a Kingdom of England and Northumbria after Northumbria was annexed in 954. Please double-check your links, and you'll see only what I've already said and no more. Deacon of Pndapetzim ( Talk ) 13:13, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 16:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Portugal-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 16:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Spain-related deletion discussions. Thryduulf (talk) 16:24, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Well perhaps the name is no more appropriate than William the Conqueror being ruler of the "Kingdom of Normandy and England", but couldn't there be an article about that brief period in the 11th century when the King of Galicia expanded his holdings on a takeover from the Count of Portugal? I agree with you that if the state wasn't called "The Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal" (from what I can tell, it was the original "Kingdom of Portugal") then it should be described as something else.  Technically, there was no such country as Austria-Hungary, yet that was the name bestowed by historians on the Empire of Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary.  From what I gather, Garcia didn't stay a doubleking for very long.  Mandsford (talk) 16:41, 22 October 2009 (UTC)
 * He didn't stay a king for long, and one king doesn't make a kingdom any more than one swallow makes a summer. There's not really any here here. Apart from Garcia's share, there doesn't seem to have been much of an Iberian kingdom of Galicia to write about. See my comment here and it's interesting to consider the Google books results if you exclude Garcia from a search for either "king of Galicia" or "kingdom of Galicia" in modern (post-1990) books. Anything worth saying, which may not be much, is probably best said somewhere else. A history-only merge with Galicia (Spain) or something relevant about Portuguese history would be best. But not kingdom of Galicia, because that may want merging too. Angus McLellan (Talk) 20:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Merge with García II of Galicia. I see no reason to have an article on an alleged kingdom that only ever had one king.  It does not even seem clear whether he regarded it as one kingdom or two kingships.  CErtainly the article needs to be pruned of some of the excessively large templates which are cluttering it up (if kept).  Peterkingiron (talk) 00:48, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Redirect to Kingdom of Galicia, which is in need of major work, especially in light of a recent edit dispute regarding content. Whether that article stays at that title or is moved to Medieval history of Galicia or Galicia in the Middle Ages doesn't matter to me. (For those interested in the origin of the title "king of Galicia and Portugal", it is the from García's epitaph from the Panteón de los Reyes. It originally read "rex Portugalliae et Galleciae", but it was destroyed by Napoleonic troops in 1808. Cf. George Tyler Northrup, "The Imprisonment of King García," Modern Philology 17 (1919): 391–413. It cannot now be ascertained whether this inscription was the original, for it was first recorded by Prudencio de Sandoval. I'm not sure why a Leonese tomb would have sported such a reference to Portugal after 1139, and it should be noted that García's power lay mostly in Portugal, not Galicia. That said, distinguishing a "Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal" from the Kingdom of Galicia is like distinguishing the "Kingdom of the French" from the Kingdom of France.) Srnec (talk) 01:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment I do not favor a separate page for this, but the fate is problematic for some of the reasons above. The most important reason for not having a page of this name is that the majority of English-language sources referring to the division of the kingdom refer to Garcia as simply receiving Galicia (with Portugal being a county within that polity).  That he may (or may not - some of the inscriptions in the royal pantheon are clearly anachronistic) have called himself King of Portugal and Galicia need not mean we should - he may simply have used this to memorialize his suppression of the rebel count.  Kings do have a habit of claiming elaborate titles, but we don't call Henry VIII King of France, even if he claimed it for himself. Sancho el Mayor called himself "King in Castile", but no English-language writers follow this usage, and neither should we. The problem is what to do with it.  I think a strong argument could be made that Garcia's lands were intended to represent the same polity created in the previous partition in the early 10th century as the kingdom of Galicia. That, though, only brings us to the other problem mentioned above.  There was only one previous king of Galicia, plus a few generations later a king who was recognized in Galicia as anti-king of Asturias/Leon a couple of years before he was able to take the entire kingdom. It only existed during two, or perhaps three, transient windows. However, one of the warring versions of Kingdom of Galicia treats every king who ruled a kingdom that included the region of Galicia as a King of Galicia. To use an analogy, it would be as if an article on the Presidents of Texas would describe the Kings of Spain, the Presidents of Mexico, the Presidents of the United States and of the Confederate States all as holders of the title, President of Texas; or in the Iberian theatre, calling the Al-Andalus wali of the Upper March and the subsequent kings of Navarre and/or Aragon all "Kings of Viguera".  That version represents a POV that is almost non-existent outside of Portugal, where there has been a politically-influenced nationalistic tradition of placing Portugal as simply the latest manifestation of a continuum that includes this supposed longstanding Kingdom of Galicia. Still I would vaguely lean in favor of redirecting there, as long as the less-POV version wins out. Agricolae (talk) 04:58, 23 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Delete. The fairly complicated history of Portugal, Galicia, and the Iberian peninsula in general during this period is better handled without using this confusing and essentially unattested terminology. The information can be dealt with in Kingdom of Galicia, History of Portugal, and elsewhere where it is relevant.--Cúchullain t/ c 17:51, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
 * But a redirect is easier and, most importantly, it prevents anyone having to fix redlinks. Srnec (talk) 02:29, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If it makes any difference, I'd be happy enough to fix the links. Angus McLellan (Talk) 18:00, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The more I think about it, the more I think there should not be a single page for the Kingdom of Galicia, unless, perhaps, it is used for the Suevi kingdom (and I don't have the expertise to know whether this is authentic or more Galician/Portuguese nationalism at work). The 10th century 'kings' represent one who ruled briefly what was effectively a transient partition state, and several (Alfonso Fruelaz, Sancho Ordonez, Vermudo II) assigned as kings of Galicia in a POV effort to harmonize conflicting royal claims or conflicting sources by making the competitors kings of a separate Galician or Asturian entity, rather than simply alternative claimants to the whole. A 10th century Kingdom of Galicia has received almost no coverage as an independent entity in English sources. For this period, it should probably just redirect to Kingdom of Leon or Kingdom of Asturias (and an argument could be made for merging those as well, as they are usually presented as a single continuum). That's really a different question, but it means the page we are talking about here shouldn't redirect to a questionable Kingdom of Galicia page. Garcia II may be the better destination. Agricolae (talk) 00:46, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A late (9th-century) source makes Wittiza a sub-king in Galicia. A contemporary source records that Galicia, created a county for a French nobleman after the demise of the kingdom created for García II, was set aside as a kingdom for said Frenchman's son, the future Alfonso VII upon the remarriage of his mother, who in the interim continued to rule Galicia with titles like Gallaeciae imperatrix. I draw no conclusions, but I think there is more substance to the notion of a kingdom of Galicia than is perhaps being given credit, and I think it might begin with the period during which all Hispania was ruled by the Visigoths save Galicia under the Suevi. (Note that this has nothing to do with Portugal at all.) Srnec (talk) 04:12, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.