It is spoken by some 3 million people, mainly in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is official along with Spanish. The language is also spoken in some border zones of the neighbouring Spanish regions of Asturias and Castile and León, as well as by Galician migrant communities in the rest of Spain, in Latin America, the United States, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.
Galician is part of the same family of languages as the Portuguese language, and both share a relatively recent common origin. The shared Galician-Portuguese lyric (13th–14th centuries) was among the most remarkable literature produced in Europe in the Middle Ages.