The Instituto da Lingua Galega (ILG) is a centre of linguistic studies that is part of the University of Santiago de Compostela. Its range of activities is wide and, among others, includes the study of the Galician language in a diachronic and synchronic way, the carrying out of pre-doctoral and post-doctoral programs, the linguistic assistance to people with a professional relation to the Galician language (in the realms of education, state administration and mass media) and the organization of scientific conferences on the Galician language. The first part of this presentation covers the time prior to the foundation of the ILG to the year 1983. Studies of the dialectal varieties, the reinforcement of the orthographic standard model and the organization of formative courses belong in this time when the standardization of the Galician language was urgent. The second part covers the time between the year of the official adoption of the orthographic standard model (1982) and the year of the second revision of its norms (2003). Significant progress made both towards standardization and in the areas of dialectology, grammar and lexicography coexist with the orthographic debate at a time when the scene of Galician philology changed significantly with the foundation of the “Ramon Piñeiro’s Centre for the Research in the Humanities”, the University of Vigo and the University of A Coruña. The third part reviews the course of the Instituto in the new millennium. Progress in areas such as prosody, linguistic change and variation, the digitalization of thesaurus and resources, the international spreading of the Galician language and the consolidation of collaborative research between different universities should be noted at this time.
