García II of Galicia

García II (c. 1042 – March 22, 1090 AD), King of Galicia and Portugal,^[1] was the youngest of the three sons and heirs of Ferdinand I, King of Castile and León, and Sancha of León, whose Leonese inheritance included the lands García would be given.

He was allotted Galicia in the partition of his father's kingdom and in 1065 proclaimed the independence of the Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal, taking advantage of the internal tension caused by the civil war between his brothers, Sancho and Alfonso. García thus became the first to use the title King of Portugal, in 1071, when he defeated Count Nuno II Mendes in the Battle of Pedroso. His brothers soon united against him and partitioned his kingdom between them, forcing García to flee to Seville.

In 1072, the entire kingdom was forcibly reannexed along with León by his brother Sancho and subsequently passed to Alfonso. He recalled the exiled García, and put him in a monastery, where he remained until his death sometime around 1090. From that time, Galicia remained part of the kingdom of Castile and León, although under differing degrees of self-government. Although it did not last for very long, the kingdom set the stage for future Portuguese nationalism under Henry of Burgundy. He ordered his prison chains to be carved on his tombstone.

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