Iruña de Oca
Araba · ÁlavaPaís Vasco / Euskadi · País Vasco
Compound Basque toponym. Iruña, from the Basque iri ('city, town') plus determinant suffix -ño, designates 'the city'. De Oca refers to the Bayas river, anciently known as Oca.
Evolution of the name
- iri + ño Old Basque before the 1st century
- Iruña-Veleia Latinized 1st–5th centuries
- Iruña de Oca Basque-Castilian from the 12th century
Reflections, to the letter
Iruña means simply 'the city'. The name is no exaggeration: a kilometre west lies Iruña-Veleia, the Roman city that once spread over 126 hectares behind a wall a kilometre and a half around, sixteen towers, a southern gate. You can walk into the enclosure freely. The village kept calling itself 'the city' long after the city itself had fallen to grass and foundation lines.
Glossary
- Iruña-Veleia
- Roman archaeological site in the council of Iruña de Oca (Álava), occupied between the 2nd century BC and the 5th AD as pre-Roman civitas and then Roman municipium. It preserves eighty hectares of surface with Late Empire walls, forum, baths and residential quarter. Centre of the 2008 "exceptional pieces" controversy about supposed proto-Basque 3rd-century graffiti, deauthenticated by the scientific community in 2010.
- Roman road
- A stone-paved Roman highway, part of the imperial communications network (Via Aquitana, Via Augusta, Iter ab Asturica); many such roads became medieval routes and, later, stretches of the Camino de Santiago.
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Camino Vasco del Interior