Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry emerged in the 12th century in northwestern Iberia, becoming the dominant language for troubadour-style poetry on the peninsula. Poets composed cantigas (songs) in three main genres: cantigas de amor (love songs), cantigas de amigo (female-voiced songs), and cantigas de escárnio e maldizer (satire and invective).

Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry adapted troubadour conventions to Iberian contexts, creating distinctive forms like the cantiga de amigo with its parallelism and refrains that may reflect pre-Romance oral traditions. This poetic tradition influenced later Portuguese and Spanish literature, while its preservation in cancioneiros (songbooks) provides invaluable evidence of medieval performance practices. The genre's female-voiced poems offer rare examples of women's perspectives in medieval lyric, whether composed by men or women.