Bibliografía multidisciplinar de la frontera hispano-portuguesa

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

25 años investigación en el ámbito de la Extremadura actual centrados en el período medieval creemos que han sido suficientes para ofrecer un amplio y sugerente repertorio de trabajos que complementa perfectamente la producción historiográfica desarrollada para otras etapas históricas en el mismo marco geográfico. Del mismo modo, también pensamos que lo elaborado hasta el momento puede ser suficiente para satisfacer la necesidad que la historiografía nacional de este período tiene con vistas al desarrollo de una futura investigación más profunda y general que permita conocer las especifidades y posibles variantes locales. No obstante, a pesar de los avances consideramos que todavía quedan pendientes temáticas y períodos concretos de la Edad Media por tratar convenientemente. Palabras clave: Historia Medieval, Historiografía, Castilla, Extremadura, señoríos, realengo, Órdenes Militares, Concejos.

25 years research in the field of current Extremadura centered in the medieval period we have been sufficient to provide a comprehensive and inspiring repertoire of work that perfectly complements the historiographical developed for other historical periods in the same geographical. Similarly, we also think that it developed so far may be sufficient to meet the need for the national historiography of this period is for the development of future deep and general research charting the local specificities and possible variants. However, despite the considerable advances that remain outstanding issues and specific periods of the Middle Ages treated accordingly. Keywords: Medieval History, Historiography, Castille, Extremadura, Crown, Military Orders, Councils.

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

En esta exposición nos ocuparemos de las representaciones animales que decoran los monumentos funerarios del período romano de un colectivo muy preciso, el correspondiente al de la población zoela, que tendía como capital Curunda, y asentada aquella en el Sur-Suroeste del Conventus Asturum, ya que a través de estas manifestaciones escultóricas e iconográficas se intentará reconstruir el esquema mental de esta población y su relación con el mundo de ultratumbra y el propio entorno natural donde habitan. 

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original] 

Pocas veces se siente de modo más directo el peso de la historia que en el momento de cruzar una frontera. La ilusión o la inquietud de salir, la alegria o el miedo de volver son el resultado del reconocimiento de los espacios que la historia ha hecho propios o ajenos. Pocas cosas, en efecto, expresan la historia con más intensidad que las fronteras; su creación, su movilidad o su estabilidad, su desaparición son siempre testimonio de cambios que afectan a los grupos humanos en contacto. La frontera es, sobre el mapa, trazo grueso de la organización social del território. Vivimos tiempos particularmente contradictorios a propósito de este asunto; tiempos de esperanzadora dilución de fronteras y también de su, en ocasiones, conflictivo nacimiento. Recurrir a la historia es siempre un buen procedimiento para evitar, en cualquiera de los casos, las visiones simplificadoras e ingenuas; un buen procedimiento para adquirir, de todos modos, visiones y compromisos propios. Hacerlo, además, en el marco de una reunión que conmemora el nacimiento de una frontera precisamente en el momento en que, al menos en sus manifestaciones más externas, se desdibuja, no parece del todo inoportuno.

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original] 

El texto del presente artículo trata sobre la identidad extremeña desde una perspectiva histórico-antropológica. En la primera parte, se abordan, en apretada síntesis, la valoración multifocal que ha recibido Extremadura en distintos contextos temporales y las imágenes que, desde el interior y el exterior, se han construido/inventado sobre su naturaleza cultural. Se reflexiona, en la segunda parte, sobre la construcción de la identidad étnica extremeña y acerca del proceso de etnogénesis emergente que en la actualidad dinamiza el mosaico social y político-cultural del Estado español. Concluimos con ciertas consideraciones sobre los efectos y desequilibrios que el «hecho diferencial», los procesos de diferenciación sociocultural, están provocando entre las distintas circunscripciones socioterritoriales.

This article deals with the Extremaduran identity from a historical-anthropological perspective. In the first section, we advocate, in a compact synthesis, the multifocal evaluation that Extremadura has recieved in distinct temporal contexts. We examine images that, from both inside and outside, have constructed/invented the cultural nature of Extremadura. The second part consists of a reflection on the contruction of the ethnic Extremaduran identity and the process of emergent ethnogenesis that is currently active in the social- and political- cultural mosaic of the Spanish State. We conclude with certain considerations about the effects and inequalities that the “differentiation fact”, the processes of sociocultural differentiation, are provoking between the distinct sociocultural circumscriptions.

[Resumen extraído de la fuente]

The object of the present dissertation is the A Fala geolect, which belongs to the Galician-Portuguese subgroup of Romance languages. This minority language is used by approx. 5,000 people, who live in three villages: San Martín de Trevejo, Eljas, and Valverde del Fresno in the Spanish province of Cáceres (Extremadura), on the border with Portugal (Xálima region).

A Fala is known in the contemporary linguistic literature (1990s) due to its vitality and a high intergenerational transmission rate, which is exceptional in comparison with the other languages traditionally spoken on the Spanish-Portuguese border, nowadays virtually extinct. The latest research (Ramallo, 2011; Manso Flores, 2016), though generally characterised by optimism, suggests nonetheless a disappearance of some vernacular forms among the youngest generation and a falling number of speakers whose first language is A Fala. The reasons for this are probably changing social structure, new economic relations, contemporary means of transportation and digital communication. A Fala is no longer geographically isolated, which had helped in its preservation since the times of the Reconquista. Furthermore, the Xálima region is no longer the local centre of commerce.

The present author wonders about the future of A Fala and its survival in a fast-changing reality. To find the answers, it is necessary to discover what has helped A Fala to survive in the last decades as well as the real state of preservation of the vernacular forms among the community which participates freely in the postmodern world.

The author proposes two research hypotheses:

1. A Fala is a significant element of the identity of the members of the A Fala community.

2. The real range of penetration of Castilian is probably wider than that reported in previous research, and it has accelerated in the last years.

For the necessities of research on identity, the author determines the epistemic borders of the research group using the sociolinguistic concept of speech community. Having overviewed three of its most important theoretical conceptualizations, the author decides to describe Xálima as a community of practice (Rampton, 2009; Coupland, 2010; Meyerhoff and Strycharz, 2013). This assumption is vital in order to explain the selection of the interviewees and understand the identity dynamics observed during the conversations.

“A community of practice is an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavour. (…) Practices emerge in the course of this mutual endeavour” (Eckert i McConnell-Ginet, 1992). This concept is inherent to social constructivism, whereby “human reality is extensively reproduced, contested and created anew in the socially and historically specific activities of everyday life” (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1992). The practice in the analysed community could be described as a “work for the protection of A Fala” and the members of this community have the background and the prestige necessary to decide about the future of this local language.

The analysis of the interviews was conducted according to the analytical principles proposed by American anthropologists Bucholtz and Hall Bucholtz i Hall (2004a, 2004b, 2005, 2010) within so-called sociocultural linguistics. The authors propose a dynamic vision of identity created in an intersubjective rather than in an individual fashion and as a social category which emerges in ongoing conversation rather than being aprioristically fixed in unitary and durable macrosociological categories (differently from the traditional sociolinguistics of Labov).

Accordingly to the emergence principle, identity is built through discourse and does not exist before language contact. It is in interaction where it gains social meaning. The positionality principle determines identity as positional in the spatial, cultural and chronological sense. In this manner, we are able to look at the social processes which take place between the individual social actors. The indexicality principle determines the semiotic function of some language elements which (often indirectly) point to a certain social category. Identity also has a relational character: it is a social category which gains meaning in the interactional and intersubjective configuration of an ongoing conversation. The partiality of identity highlights the often incoherent nature of identity constructions. The intersubjective (e.g. ideological) representations shaped through the interaction are partial and ephemeral. They are temporary, local and contextual. It is a constructivist and antiessentialist way of understanding the identity process, whereby agency is partial, intersubjective and distributed among all the interlocutors.

Having analysed 6 interviews (of a duration of about 10 hours), the author states that the interactional dynamic observed during the talks has the abovementioned ontological and epistemic characteristics of an identity. This social category is clearly bound with the vernacular language used by the speech community of Xálima. The analysis of the material and the anthropological observations appears to allow the present author to state that language heritage is an object of some axiologically positive social and ideological stances of the members of a community who are willing to act for its preservation. However, we need to point out their general scepticism towards the ideas of officialization and normativization of A Fala.

The second hypothesis is verified based on research conducted among a group of teenage native speakers of the mañegu variety of A Fala used in San Martín de Trevejo. In the research, the present author analyses the acceptability of geolect samples containing vernacular language features and also those containing castilianised features.

The ability to discern between the two codes should lead to a better understanding of the state of preservation of A Fala and the range of its castilianisation. It might also help to answer the question whether the existing, uninstitutionalized practice of language transmission is sufficient.

Having discussed the demographic and sociolinguistic data about the language use, the present author conducted an acceptability task regarding 17 groups of pre-determined morphonological elements which are characteristic for A Fala and its foreign analogues (144 elements in total).

The results point to an overall acceptance of at least 4 unetymological features (diphthongization of Ě and Ŏ, monophthongization of the decrescent diphthongs, lack of difference between the voiced and voiceless sibilants, simplified -m- forms of -MB-, lack of the affricate /ʤ/). These processes have already been partially described in the literature . (Cintra, 1959; Maia, 1977; Costas González, 2013). Overall, we can point to a tendency to accept the hypercorrect variants styled after Castilian.

The most important constatation is the general acceptance, in all the analysed contexts, of the unetymological velar fricative /x/, which has, up to date, only been described in some isolated borrowings. The author supposes that the spread of this element took place about 10-15 years ago (it was not pointed out in the research from the 1990s) and it has already reached the majority of the young population.

In conclusion, the author confirms both hypotheses. It seems that A Fala has survived to this day also because of its social meaningfulness. The local elite builds their identity around their language. Nonetheless, the author notices a disturbing contradiction: the observed social and ideological stances contribute to the maintenance of the status quo of a profoundly minorized language and inhibits it from gaining any form of institutional prestige (A Fala does not even have an official ortography). From the second part of the investigation it may be concluded that probably, in the current sociolinguistic, social and cultural context, this kind of attitudes might lead to an ever faster castilianization of A Fala.

ÍNDICE: [Introducción] | Número de sacerdotes | Reparto de las ofrendas | Misas y fiestas principales | Otras obligaciones litúrgicas | Procesiones | Romerías | Entierros | Bautizos | Bodas | Extremaunción | Otros derechos | Final | Apéndice I: Fiestas de guardar | Apéndice II: Memoria y razón de los derechos y otras cosas particulares que pertenecen al beneficiado de esta villa de San Martín de Trevejo

[Resumen extraído de la fuente original]

La peculiar situación del municipio de Olivenza ofrece un interesante tema de estudio también para la Historia de la Iglesia. El autor repasa su situación parroquial durante la Edad Media y Moderna para concluir con su actuación durante la Guerra de la Independencia. Aporta documentación extraída del Archivo Histórico Municipal de Olivenza. Palabras clave: Olivenza; Historia medieval y moderna; Guerra de la Independencia.

[Resumen tomado de la introducción del artículo]

"Es nuestro propósito ofrecer un estudio de la iglesia en el marco espacial que resulta ser Extremadura durante la repoblación de los siglos XII y XIII que se nos antoja está condicionado por una serie de realidades. La primera es de naturaleza histórica y es la relacionada con la permanencia de la línea de frontera en territorio extremeño durante más de un siglo con las consecuencias políticas, sociales, demográficas y económicas que acarrea una circunstancia de esta magnitud. Sin embargo, no es únicamente la frontera la que condiciona el desarrollo de la iglesia, el proceso repoblador lento y zonalmente inconsistente también tiene su incidencia" (p. 882). 

ÍNDICE: I. INTRODUCCIÓN │││ II. ORGANIZACIÓN ECLESIÁSTICA │││ III. EL CLERO SECULAR │││ IV. LAS ERMITAS │││ V. CLERO SECULAR ││ 1. Las órdenes religiosas ││2. E eremitismo y sus manifestaciones │ A. Preimeras noticias: el documento sobre beguinos │ B. Los primeros eremitas "franciscanos" │ C. Otros grupos no reglados ││ 3. Las beatas │││ VI. DEVOCIONES ││ 1. Trinidad ││ 2. Cristo ││ 3. María │ A. María en su vida y en sus misterios│ B. María llena de virtud y de gracia divina y humana │ C. María que atiende a los mortales │ D. María con advocación de un lugar determinado │ E. María con advocación temporal │ F. María portadora de un objeto │ G. María venerada por las  órdenes religiosas ││ 4. Los Santos │││ VII. LAS FIESTAS │││ VIII. DEVOCIONES Y PRÁCTICAS MORTUORIAS ││ A. Entierro en tal iglesia ││ B. Celebración de misas ││ C. Fundación de capellanías ││  D. Otras mandas │││ IX. BENEFICIENCIA: COFRADÍAS Y HOSPITALES ││ 1. Cofradías ││ 2. Hospitales y beneficiencia