Ballota

The coastal hamlet of Ballota sits indeed in a small valley between two hills, with a small estuary that flows into the eponymous beach —⁠a geography that would back the Latin diminutive reading of the toponym (vallis + -otta → 'little valley, small vale'). The Asturian-Leonese phonetics of the intervocalic -ll- cluster do not allow distinguishing with certainty between the originary palatal ll- and the -ll- resulting from gemination; both vallis and a pre-Roman base balo-/balio- could give the current Ballota. Some Asturian onomatologists have also proposed a zoological reading —⁠the ballota would be a late derivative of ballaena ('whale'), through the seafaring town dedicated to whaling until the 17th century⁠— but this reading is minoritarian and does not fit the phonetics. The hamlet belongs to the council of Cudillero. The parish church of Santiago Apóstol preserves the Jacobean dedication, coherent with the pilgrim passage documented since the Middle Ages. The Ballota beach, hemmed between two cliffs, is one of the least urbanised in central-western Asturias.