La lengua del hierro. Nexos medievales entre Álava y la Demanda / The language of iron. Medieval links between Alava and the Demanda

Abstract

In the early medieval documentation that refers to the Upper Ebro valley we encounter an abundance of references to both iron and smiths, but silence with regard to furnaces or forges. This leads us to a series of considerations about the essentially precarious and rural nature of early iron-working, in accordance with a series of recent studies on northern Iberia. In this same documentation we observe that, above all others, two areas on opposite flanks of the Ebro valley and separated by almost one hundred kilometres are repeatedly associated with iron-working: Álava and the Sierra de la Demanda. They are, moreover, two regions linked in this period by human migration, evidenced above all by its linguistic consequences: the Álava dialect flourishing in the Demanda in this period. We hypothesise that the influx of Alavese population into the Demanda might well have contributed to its metallurgical pre-eminence, although this is also clearly conditioned by the geology of the area.