Emigration was an important factor in the development of modern Galicia. The influence of Galician emigrants extended to every field, including the cultural domain, with emigrants in the Americas playing an outstanding role in Galician-themed book production, be it by supporting publication within Galicia or by publishing in the host countries – mainly Cuba and Argentina. In 1864, the printing and publishing house La Propaganda Literaria was set up by the Havana-based Alejandro Chao Fernández. It printed several literary and journalistic projects, including Rosaliá de Castro’s epochal collection Follas novas (“New leaves”), which, though printed in Madrid, was financed from the Cuban capital. Later Galician publications sponsored by La Propaganda Literaria include Ramón Armada Teixeiro’s poetry collection Caldo de grelos (1885) and Waldo Álvarez Insua’s Galicia contemporánea: Páginas de viaje in 1889.

Galician societies in the Americas promoted Galician book production as well. The Centro Gallego of Havana financed the third volume of Manuel Murguía’s Historia de Galicia, and provided him with a pension so that he would be able to continue with his work. Other eminent writers published their first works in Cuba: the Soidades: Versos en gallego of Manuel Lugrís Freire (1863–1940) went to print in 1894, with a preface by the poet Manuel Curros Enríquez, who himself had had a considerable journalistic career in Cuba. In the 20th century, Ramón Cabanillas (1876–1959) published his first collection of poems in Havana: No desterro (1913), with a prologue by agrarian activist Basilio Álvarez, whose Abriendo el surco, a summary of his agrarianist struggle, appeared in the Cuban capital in that same year. Cabanillas’s second collection, Vento mareiro (1915), was likewise published in Cuba. The Empresa de Publicidad Galiciana, owned by Manuel Fernández Doallo (an emigrant from Ourense), published important newspapers like the Eco de Galicia (from 1917) and the Heraldo de Galicia.

In Argentina, the Centro Gallego of Buenos Aires was a notable sponsor of literary soirées and organized Floral Games in 1881. Here, too, book publishing and journalism were linked. Lugo-born Manuel Castro López (1860–1926) brought out the Almanaque gallego, which ran from 1898 until 1927 and, in carrying contributions from both sides of the Atlantic, established a conduit between Galicians in Spain and Argentina. A prominent literary journalist in Buenos Aires was Fortunato Cruces Angueira (1870–1961), founding editor of Nova Galicia (from 1901) and sponsor of Galician book publications in the Argentine capital: Primeiras follas: Contos e copras (1898), Almanaque de Galicia (1909), Castañolas (1913), Cousas gallegas (1923).

During his (relatively short) stay in Buenos Aires, the writer and journalist José Costa Figueiras (1880–1955) published the novel La risa de los dioses in 1913 and captured the émigré world in his two-novel series España en Ultramar (1919), consisting of La sugestión de América: Novela de emigrantes and Las fraguas de la fortuna: Aguafuertes de la emigración.