The first written source talking about the “cantabros” is in the year 195 AC when Caton the Old locates the spring of the Ebro river in “the country of the cantabros”. It looks like in the last centuries of the first millennium BC, different families of people of Indo-European origin, most probably Celtics, enter into a process of convergency in their identities. In the years previous to the Christian age, when the Romans know the region and are interested in its control, those people receive already the name that later on will be the most common: they are the “cantabros”.
Those people offered a strong resistance against the Roman who tried to control their land between the years 29-19 BC. Even when they were under the Roman dominion, their features, their religion, their social organization do not disappear and everything come out again at the end of the Roman Empire. That's why, during the last years of the Empire which was suffering the successive waves of the Germans invasions, the “cantabros” gain their own independence and organize their own political structures. For example, different historical sources for this period talk about the existence of a Senate. The Visigothic king Leovigildo forced them to submit to his authority but only partially since the “cantabros” keep their own sovereignty. This character appears again with the invasion of Spain by the muslims and later on with the creation of the first Spanish autochthonous monarchy, hold by the first Spanish dynasty: the House of Cantabria.
By that time, the Cantabria country was already the embryo of a political organization that will be hegemonic in the Spanish peninsula giving origin to the kingdom of Castillo-Leon, when before it was only a small part of one of the provinces in the boundaries of the Roman Empire and the Visighotic Kingdom. At that time, we find Cantabria organized in a series of territories: Liebana, Asterias de Santillana, Campoo, Trasmiera... Later on the fight of the Cantabria people against the feudal powers gives place to a series of representative institutions that, during the XVI and XVII centuries will reach some stability. Those institutions are the Juntas Generales de Liébana, Cuatro Villas de la Costa, Merindad de Trasmiera, Nueve Valles de Asturias de Santillana y la Asamblea General de Campoo.
During the XVIII century the said institutions will undergo a process of integration that will give its fruit in three moments. First, the Partido de las Cuatro Villas de la Costa de la Provincia de Cantabria hold a meeting in 1727 that showed the existence of a movement pro-union. That movement took shape in 1778 with the creation of the Junta general de la Provincia de Cantabria. Secondly, Enrique Florez publish in 1768 his book “ La Cantabria ”. This book returns from the point of view of the history the land of the “cantabros” to them, his historical owners. And, thirdly, the creation in 1754 of the dioceses of Santander and in 1785 of the Real Consulado de Santander are the recognition of this process of integration by the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The process reaches is final point in 1801 with the creation of the Provincia Maritima de Santander by the government of Spain. When that same government will start the planning for the division of the Spanish territory in provinces during the first decades of the XIX century, Cantabria had already its own configuration as a union.
The XIX century was also the scenario of the romantic rediscovering of the characteristic features of a people with millenary antecedents. The Independence War gave the bishop Menendez de Luarca the chance to give himself the title of Regent of Cantabria and to organize an army call “Cantabrian Army” to defend the country against the French Army. During the second part of the century, a group of very well educated people like Amós de Escalate, José María Pereda, Marcelino Menendez Pelayo y Angel de los Rios, started to describe the historical image of a traditional Cantabria, linked to its ancestral origins. This work found support in the scientific research of Mateo Escagedo. During the second republic (1931-1939) all these movements crystalized in a political movement. From it the Federal Republican Party was born. This party wrote the draft of a Statut for a future State Cantabro-Castellano.
During the second half of the XX century and despite the adverse political climate, the activity of the historians and scholars and the feelings of the majority of the people, channel through the sports and its associations “cantabras” and through the many folkloric groups, contribute to intensify the feeling of identity. That feeling gets its political expression in the democratic process started after 1975. Since the beginning of that process Cantabria claims the right to be an autonomous region in the context of the new organization of the Spanish territories. As consequence, a Statut of Autonomy is drafted and approved in 1981. The Statut marks the end of an long historical process which for centuries has been always oriented by two ideas: the integration of all the lands of Cantabria and the consolidation of its self-govern.
Data obtained from the Historical Library of the Parliament of Cantabria.
