Pilar García Negro

Pilar García Negro (born 1953) is a Galician/Spanish politician, writer, sociolinguist, teacher, and campaigner in support of Galego, the Galician language, which is spoken in the northwest of Spain and the extreme north of Portugal.

María del Pilar García Negro was born on 9 October 1953 in Lugo in Spain and went to primary and secondary school in that town.

The title of her thesis was Galician language and legislation (1975-1986).

Negro taught Spanish at the Instituto Eusebio da Guarda in A Coruña between 1976 and 1985 and in A Sardiñeira in the same city between 1985 and 1990.

Negro published a section called "The language" in the weekly Galician newspaper, A Nosa Terra, from March 1978 to August 1979, followed by a section called "Literature and Language Lessons" with Xosé María Dobarro from 1979 to 1980.

A Nosa Terra was written only in Galego.

She always taught in Galician, which led to a disciplinary case in 1983.

Negro was president of the Alexandre Bóveda Cultural Association of A Coruña from 1983 to 1988.

She is a member of the editorial boards of Altres Nacions, the Philology Journal of the University of A Coruña, and the journal Terra e Tempo.

Negro was a member of the Parliament of Galicia for the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (Galician Nationalist Bloc), between 1989 and 2003, the Bloc's first woman deputy.

During that time, she stood out as being one of the main defenders of the legality of the Galician place name of the city of A Coruña.

She studied Hispanic philology and Galician philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela, receiving a doctorate in January 1991.

Since 1991 she has been a professor at the University of A Coruña, becoming a full professor in the Department of Galician-Portuguese, French and Linguistics in 1995.

She resigned from parliament in 2003 to return to her profession.

Since 2004 she has been the managing director of the Bautista Álvarez Foundation for nationalist studies.

Negro has taken part in numerous national and international conferences on sociolinguistics, non-standard European languages, Galician literature and feminism, and has published studies on Rosalía de Castro, Valentín Lamas Carvajal, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, Eduardo Blanco Amor, Ricardo Carballo, Manuel María Fernández Teixeiro, Marica Campo, Pilar Pallarés and others who write in the Galician language.

In 2006 she was tried and convicted, along with Xosé Manuel Carril and Francisco Xosé Rei, for insulting behaviour and public disorder after a plenary session, held in 2004, in the María Pita Palace in A Coruña, because the mayor, Francisco Vázquez Vázquez, intended to make official both the Galician and Spanish place names for the city.

Negro's publications have included:

Negro has won several awards in the Galician region:

Negro retired from teaching in 2016 although she continues to teach at the Senior University.