A Fonsagrada

The toponym preserves, almost without wear, the original Latin formula. Fons is the common noun for a natural water source —⁠distinct from aqua, water as a substance, and flumen, the river as a course⁠—⁠. Sacratus is the participle of the verb sacrare, 'to consecrate, to dedicate to a cult', applied to persons, places and objects withdrawn from profane use. Local legend fixes the Christian consecration in the 14th century: the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a Jewish pilgrim by the spring, and he converted to Christianity after drinking from its water. But veneration of the spring is much older. The fountain is documented as an object of cult since the 12th century, and the very formula of the toponym —⁠Fons Sacrata, with no further qualifier⁠— suggests a late Christianisation of a spring already sacred in pre-Christian times. The ancient Celts of northwestern Hispania venerated springs as points where the underworld surfaced; the Romans incorporated them as fontes sacrae, generally with votive altars to local deities. When the Christianisation of the rural environment arrived, the old pagan springs were rededicated to the Virgin, to Saint Mary or to Saint John — without needing to erase the place, only to change the titular figure. A Fonsagrada is, in this sense, a religious palimpsest preserved in a single toponym.