María Rosalía Rita de Castro (1837 - 1885), was a Galician romanticist writer and poet.Writing in the Galician language, after the Séculos Escuros, she became an important figure of the Galician romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento. Her poetry is marked by saudade, an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy.The date she published her first collection of poetry in Galician, Cantares gallegosin 1863, is commemorated every year as the Día das Letras Galegas, an official holiday in Galicia.