The end of Suevi independence came not through a clash of civilisations but through a dynastic crisis that handed Leovigild the pretext he needed. When King Miro died in 583 — Gregory of Tours attributes his death to illness contracted during the campaign — after a disastrous military expedition near Seville, his young son Eboric inherited the throne. Within a year, Eboric's brother-in-law Audeca seized power, married Miro's widow Siseguntia, and confined the legitimate king to a monastery. The usurpation gave Leovigild — the most formidable Visigothic king of his age, who had spent a decade methodically encircling the Suevi realm — precisely the justification he sought.

In 585, Leovigild launched a decisive campaign into Gallaecia. His forces devastated the region and defeated the Suevi in open battle before advancing on Braga. The Chronicle of John of Biclar, a contemporary source, records that Leovigild deprived Audeca "of the totality of the kingdom," capturing the last Suevi king along with the royal treasury and the leading nobles. Audeca was tonsured and exiled to Beja in the south. That same year, a man named Malaric rose in rebellion and claimed the Suevi throne, but he was swiftly defeated and captured by Leovigild's generals, who delivered him in chains to the Visigothic king. The Kingdom of the Suebi — which had endured for 176 years as the first Germanic kingdom in post-Roman Western Europe — became the sixth province of the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo.

Leovigild's conquest brought Arianism back to a land that Martin of Braga had painstakingly converted to Catholic orthodoxy just decades earlier. The Visigothic king reinstated Arian clergy across the province, placing Arian bishops in cities like Lugo, Porto, Tui, and Viseu alongside the existing Catholic hierarchy. For the people of Gallaecia, who had witnessed Martin's patient conversion within living memory, this reversal must have been deeply unsettling. But the Arian restoration proved brief. According to Gregory of Tours, Leovigild may have embraced Catholicism on his deathbed in 586 — though no Iberian source corroborates this — and within three years his son Reccared would transform the religious landscape of the entire kingdom.

On 8 May 589, Reccared convened the Third Council of Toledo — one of the most consequential church councils in Western European history. Before an assembly of seventy-two bishops from Hispania, Gaul, and Gallaecia, the king publicly renounced Arianism and proclaimed his conversion to Catholic Christianity. The Visigoths and Suevi would follow. Among the bishops who formally abjured their Arianism at the council were four from Gallaecia's Suevi dioceses: Beccila of Lugo, Gardingus of Tui, Argiovittus of Porto, and Sunnila of Viseu. The conversion was not without resistance — an Arian conspiracy was uncovered, and its leader Segga was punished by amputation of his hands and exiled to Galicia. But the outcome was decisive: the Catholic faith was restored as the sole orthodoxy of the kingdom, uniting Visigoths, Suevi, and Hispano-Romans under a single creed. The conversion cemented the authority of the Catholic Church in Galicia and ensured that the diocesan and parish structures created under the Suevi would endure — and indeed strengthen — under Visigothic rule.

In 654, King Recceswinth promulgated the Liber Iudiciorum — the Book of Judgements — at the Eighth Council of Toledo. It was the first law code in post-Roman Western Europe to apply equally to all subjects regardless of ethnic origin, abolishing the centuries-old practice of maintaining separate legal systems for Romans and Goths. The code replaced all previous legislation — including the Breviarium Alarici, which had governed the Hispano-Roman population, and the customary Gothic law that had applied to the Visigoths — with a single, comprehensive territorial system covering every free inhabitant of the kingdom.

The Liber Iudiciorum was a monumental work: twelve books containing over 500 laws addressing civil and criminal matters, property and inheritance, marriage and family, contracts, judicial procedure, military obligations, ecclesiastical affairs, and the regulation of Jews. Though called "Visigothic," the code was written in Latin and drew heavily on Roman legal tradition, particularly the Theodosian Code and elements of Justinianic law, blended with Germanic customs and canon law. Its compilation was a royal initiative begun under Chindaswinth, with Bishop Braulio of Zaragoza playing a key editorial role in correcting and reorganising the manuscript during Chindaswinth's reign. Braulio died in 651, three years before the final version was promulgated by Recceswinth. The code was subsequently revised under King Erwig in 681, with further additions by later kings.

For Galicia, the Liber Iudiciorum had profound and lasting consequences. It formally ended any remaining legal distinction between the Suevi and their Hispano-Roman neighbours, creating a unified legal identity — hispani — across the province. The code's provisions on property, inheritance, and the rights of widows and orphans governed daily life in communities like Ribadavia, Castrelo de Miño, and Cartelle for centuries. Its influence extended far beyond the fall of the Visigothic kingdom: in 10th-century Galicia, monastic charters from Celanova, Samos, and other foundations still cited the Liber Iudiciorum as binding law. The code continued to be used by Christian judges in Muslim Spain and formed the basis of medieval Iberian legal systems during the Reconquista.

The Visigothic period in Galicia ended not with a second conquest but with a distant catastrophe. In 711, Arab and Berber forces under Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and destroyed the Visigothic army at the Battle of Guadalete, killing King Roderic. The Muslim advance reached Galicia between 713 and 716. Braga fell. Tui was assaulted and sacked, its bishop and many inhabitants enslaved. Ourense, according to later chronicles, was stormed and destroyed. Lugo, the only fortified city in the region, surrendered and was occupied, its leading citizens sent to Africa. The diocese of Britonia disappeared from the record — its see eventually relocated to Mondoñedo. Yet Muslim control over Galicia was limited and brief — Berber garrisons occupied only the major cities, while the mountainous heartland of western and central Galicia never came under the authority of Córdoba. Many refugees from the south, including the bishops of Lamego, Tui, and Coimbra, took shelter in the lands around Iria Flavia.

The occupation lasted barely a generation. In 740, the Berber garrisons north of the Douro rebelled against the Caliphate and abandoned their positions. Alfonso I of Asturias — son-in-law of the legendary Pelagius — seized the moment, launching campaigns into Galicia in 741 or 742. Lugo was reoccupied without resistance. Tui and Ourense were reconquered. The diocese of Iria Flavia recognised Alfonso's authority. After approximately twenty-eight years of intermittent Muslim presence, Galicia was restored to Christian rule — and the continuity that the Visigoths had preserved now passed into the hands of the new Kingdom of Asturias.

What survived was more enduring than any dynasty. The parish system codified by the Suevi and maintained under the Visigoths continued to organise Galician life — the 735 parishes of modern Ourense province descend directly from these early medieval structures. The Liber Iudiciorum remained the law of the land for centuries after Toledo fell. Viticulture in the Ribeiro continued unbroken — the Church's need for sacramental wine, established under the Suevi and reinforced under Visigothic governance, ensured that vines were never abandoned in the sheltered valleys of the Avia, Miño, and Arnoia. The monastic foundations of Fructuosus and his successors laid the groundwork for the great medieval houses — San Clodio, Celanova, Oseira — that would become the engines of winemaking and agriculture in the Ribeiro. Parish dedications across Cartelle — Santa Baia (Eulalia), San Salvador, Santiago, Santa María — preserve the devotional patterns of the Visigothic era. The horseshoe arch of San Xes de Francelos, the stone walls of Santa Comba de Bande, and the foundational layers of Ourense Cathedral are the visible testimony of a period that shaped the landscape, the law, and the soul of Galicia.