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For most people here in the UK the word Rioja means wine. The region produces a variety of red, white and rosé wines and the striking building in the photo is a winery designed by the renowned architect Santiago Calatrava. The winery is actually just outside the province of La Rioja in what is known as Rioja Alavesa, an area of the province of Álava which is, however, very much part of the wine-growing region.
The Rioja wine region  |
| Map from Wine Folly website |
The various areas within the region can be seen on the map. To get a clearer view click in the image. Clicking again makes the image even larger.
Not just wine
Well, Rioja may be best known for its wine, but when I was studying Ibero-Romance linguistics I learned that it was also significant as an area of linguistic transition. The province contains a number of valleys, often given as seven, although I have counted nine on the map, each of which has its own local variety of speech. As Rioja is between Castile and Aragon, these are seen as a series of transitional varieties between Castilian and Aragonese. At least, that is what I was taught. However, the Spanish dialectologist Manuel Alvar came to the conclusion that there was a distinct Riojan dialect with several subvarieties. In his study of the dialect he wrote:
En lingüística, como en historia, la Rioja es una región de tránsito y en ella podemos percibir claramente dos regiones: la Alta, que gravita hacia Castilla; la Baja, hacia Navarra y Aragón [ . . . ] . Pues bien, la personalidad de las Riojas Alta y Baja, reside, precisamente, en la pluralidad de normas lingüísticas. Y personalidad es también el mantenimiento de esas normas múltiples con las que unas gentes han creado sus vehículos expresivos. Aquí está, a mi modo de ver, la realidad del dialecto riojano como existencia singular: dialecto ecléctico en cuanto a la variedad de sus componentes, pero inexistente si desligamos la fusión.
MANUEL ALVAR, El dialecto riojano, Madrid, Editorial Gredos, Biblioteca Románica hispánica, 1976
In linguistics, as in history, Rioja is a region of transit and in it we can clearly perceive two regions: the Alta, which gravitates towards Castile, and the Baja, which gravitates towards Navarre and Aragon [ . . . ] Well, the personality of the Riojas, Alta and Baja, resides, precisely, in the plurality of linguistic norms. And their personality is also in the maintenance of those multiple norms with which people have created their vehicles of expression. This is, in my view, the reality of the Rioja dialect as a single entity: an eclectic dialect in terms of the variety of its components, but nonexistent if we separate out the fusion.
(Google translation - modified)
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The "seven" valleys of Rioja
(Copyright: Ernesto Reiner
at Wikimedia Commons)
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. |
This sketch shows the valleys. It is drawn with south at the top, which is clear from the arrow showing the direction of flow of the Ebro, which enters the sea to the east. Here is a key to the numbers:
1. Ebro River. 2. Piqueras Pass. 3. Conchas de Haro. 4. Iberian Mountain Range. 5. Oncala Pass. 6. Cantabria and Codés Mountain Ranges. 7. Alhama Valley. 8. Linares Valley. 9. Cidacos Valley. 10. Jubera Valley. 11. Leza Valley. 12. Iregua Valley. 13. Najerilla Valley. 14. Oja Valley. 15. Tirón Valley. 16. Logroño.
You will see that nine valleys are named.
In early medieval times Riojan was part of the Navarro-Aragonese language, but with the rise of Castile a process of castilianization took place and its effect was stronger in the western part of Rioja, resulting in a series of local varieties of speech which form a gradual transition from Castilian to Aragonese.
There is a substantial article on the Riojan dialect in Spanish Wikipedia, which also has an article on pre-Castilian Riojan.
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