FRONTESPO-ATLAS

Presentation

The goal of the Multidimensional Atlas of the Spain-Portugal Border is to cartographically represent linguistic and cultural information about the border area between the two countries, which has been collected by the FRONTESPO, research group, led by the University of Alcalá since 2015. 

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This constantly updated interactive tool offers diverse types of information: locations where oral corpora have been collected, records from each municipality featured in our bibliographic database, vocabulary from the border area, place names cataloged and studied by our team, or proverbs and topical sayings gathered from fieldwork or bibliographic sources. Gradually, we will be adding information on border museums, literary and historical works focused on the border region, photographs obtained in our fieldwork, and more.

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Categories

Bibliography

FRONTESPO has created a bibliographic database which includes sources dealing with the border from any of its multiple perspectives (Anthropology, Economics, Geography, Literature…), with special attention to those which study the linguistic situation. In this section we present the existing records for each municipality.

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Oral corpus

For more than 10 years, FRONTESPO has conducted hundreds of interviews along the Raya. In them, the language of the locality is studied, but also the frontier life, the customs of each territory, the traditional way of life and the changes, etc. are documented. In this section we list the interviews in each locality.

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Geographic sayings

We group under this name a whole series of proverbs, couplets, gentilicisms, etc. that refer to some locality or area of the Raya or its inhabitants.

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Photography

We offer a sample of images related to the border (frames, old customs, etc.) or to the material culture documented during our fieldwork (tools and implements, traditional constructions, costumes and dress, etc.).

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Literature

In this section we will include information and textual fragments of literary works that take place in the border territory. 

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Border museum

This category includes those museums, interpretation centres, exhibition facilities, etc. of which we are aware and which study some aspect related to life on the border or to the material and immaterial culture of the populations of the Raya. 

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Lexical treasure

The Lexical Treasure of the Spanish-Portuguese border, promoted by Dr. José Antonio González Salgado, compiles the vocabulary shared by both sides of the Spanish-Portuguese border and which characterises the Raya in relation to the rest of Spain and Portugal. 

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Testimonial

In this section we will publish fragments of our oral corpus that we find particularly interesting, either because of their linguistic features or because of the information they contain about the informant’s life, the collective history of the community, etc. 

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Toponym

This category gathers various place names of La Raya and provides information on their meaning and motivation, according to the most recent and rigorous research.

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If you wish to share information with us to be published in this atlas, please write to xose.alvarez followed by @uah.es.