Islares

The Castilian suffix -ar / -ares, from the Latin -aris / -ares, forms collective nouns or nouns for places where what the base names abounds —⁠a pattern parallel to the already known -al (cangrejal, peñascal). Applied to insula ('island'), it generates the sense of 'place of islets'. The medieval Castilian form registered the regular lenition of the intervocalic n (insula → isla) and the gender change to masculine plural when the elided noun was the generic lugar. The Cantabrian hamlet sits exactly on the Islares beach (council of Castro-Urdiales), bordered to the north by a series of granitic islets —⁠the Castros de Islares⁠— that indeed remain separated from the land at high tide. The toponym describes what the pilgrim sees. The parish church of San Martín preserves a 15th-century Gothic Christ. There are also, in the place, archaeological remains of the small Roman city of Portus Iuliobriga, a sheltered anchorage of Late Imperial Cantabrian commerce.