Province of Lugo

Lugo
Lugo; Provincia de Lugo
	Province
	Lugo Province
	Flag Coat of arms
Country	Spain
Autonomous community	Galicia
Capital	Lugo
Government
• Body	Diputación de Lugo
• President	Darío Campos Conde (since 2015) (Socialists' Party of Galicia)
Area
• Total	9,856 km2 (3,805 sq mi)
Area rank	25th
Population ()[1]
• Total
• Rank	37th
Demonym(s)	Lugués (m), Luguesa (f); Lucense
Postal code	27---
ISO 3166 code	ES-LU
Parliament	15 deputies (out of 75)
Congress	4 deputies (out of 350)
Senate	4 senators (out of 264)
Website	deputacionlugo.gal

Lugo is a province of northwestern Spain, in the northeastern part of the autonomous community of Galicia. It is bordered by the provinces of Ourense, Pontevedra, and A Coruña, the principality of Asturias, the State of León, and in the north by the Cantabrian Sea (Bay of Biscay).

The population is 331,327 (2018), of whom a quarter live in the capital Lugo. The capital city was an ancient Celtic settlement named in honour of the god Lugh (see Lyon), later Latinised as Lucus Augusti, and which became one of the three main important Galician-Roman centres alongside Braccara Augusta and Asturica Augusta (modern Braga and Astorga respectively). The province has 67 municipalities.

Languages

The vast majority of people have a common language which is Galician. Some people, especially the older generation, are monolingual and only speak Galician. There are only a few people bilingual in Galician and Castilian of the little over 10,000 inhabitants. Even in the capital, the vitality of the Galician language in conversation is very strong.

The inhabitants speak several variants of Galician in the province of Lugo. They have the characteristics of being the closest to León isoglosses and therefore also the Castilian language. So they have some grammatical and phonetic signs that are mistakenly considered influences of the Castilian or Leonese languages. However, the language of Galicia in Lugo, especially in non-coastal areas, is probably the most genuine in Galicia, due to almost no historic pressure of Castilian exercised on the rural population.