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Four languages, one country, and why the word for Spanish matters
Spain has one language spoken everywhere and several spoken somewhere, and the arrangement is constitutional rather than informal. Article 3 of the 1978 Constitution makes Castilian the official language of the State, obliges all Spaniards to know it and gives them the right to use it — and then provides that the other Spanish languages shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities, in accordance with their Statutes. So the co-officiality is real, it is regional, and each region's Statute of Autonomy is where the detail lives. Galician is one of four such languages, alongside Catalan, Basque and — with a different and weaker status — Valencian, Aranese and others. It is not a dialect of Spanish. It is a Romance language that shares an origin with Portuguese, to the point where Galician and northern Portuguese are mutually intelligible, and it has its own literature going back to medieval lyric poetry. Around two million people can speak it, and it is the co-official language with the highest proportion of speakers in rural use — though, like the others, its use among the young has been falling, which is a live political subject. The place names are the most visible consequence and the one a visitor meets first. Since the 1980s the official toponyms in Galicia are the Galician forms only: A Coruña, not La Coruña; Ourense, not Orense; Sanxenxo, not Sangenjo. Spanish-language media inside Spain generally use the official forms, and a road sign will not offer you an alternative. The same applies in Catalonia — Girona, Lleida — and the Basque Country. Using the old Castilianised names is not neutral; it reads as a political choice, whether or not you intended one. Which brings us to castellano. In Galicia, Catalonia, Valencia and the Basque Country, the word for Spanish is normally castellano, and the reason is precise: Galician is also a Spanish language, so calling only Castilian español implies otherwise. Outside those regions, and everywhere in Latin America, español is entirely ordinary. The safe habit is to use castellano when you are in a bilingual region or discussing the languages of Spain, and español the rest of the time — and to notice which word the person you are talking to uses, which tells you a good deal. One practical reassurance. You will not need Galician. Everyone in Galicia speaks Castilian, conversations with an outsider happen in it by default, and no one expects a visitor to have learned anything else. What is appreciated — genuinely and out of proportion to the effort — is a couple of words and the right question. Bo día, grazas, and ¿cómo se dice esto en gallego? will get you a great deal further than fluency in a fortnight would.