Naval
Camino Catalán por San Juan de la Peña
HuescaAragón
Pre-Roman toponym of disputed etymology. The most sustained hypothesis —Joan Coromines, X.L. García Arias— derives it from the Vasco-Aquitanian base *naba ('plain between mountains, enclosed meadow') with pre-Roman locative suffix -al, descriptive denomination of the flat valley of the Suelves river between the Castillo and Sevil ranges. The medieval form attested from the 10th century preserves the base without alteration.
The small town of Naval was, from late prehistory, a centre of salt exploitation: the subsoil saline springs, attested from the Neolithic (4000 BC) by isotopic analysis of bones from the Cova del Salí site, were industrially exploited by the Romans and by the Muslims. The salt of Naval maintained for centuries the monopoly of supply of the Aragonese and Catalan Pyrenees; the monastery of San Juan de la Peña received in 1057 the royal privilege of exploitation of the Naval salt flats. The traditional salt industry, active until 1979, was reactivated in 2018 as artisan salt flats with annual production of 80 tonnes by solar evaporation.
Evolution of the name
- *nabal pre-Roman Vasco-Aquitanian before the 9th century
- Naval medieval Aragonese from the 10th century
Glossary
- Attested
- A form or word documented in writing in historical sources; opposed to "reconstructed" (forms proposed by comparative inference but not actually documented).
- Etymology
- The origin and history of a word and the phonetic and semantic changes it has undergone. An etymology may be confirmed, probable or disputed depending on documentary attestations and linguistic parallels.
- Fuero
- A medieval legal privilege granted by a king to a town, conferring special rights and freedoms. A key instrument of medieval Christian repopulation, attracting settlers by offering jurisdictional autonomy.
- Locative suffix
- A Castilian ending marking "place of" or "workshop where X is worked": -ería (panadería, herrería), -ero/-era (barquera, Itero "place of the road"). From the Latin -arium.
- Pre-Roman
- Prior to the Romanisation of the Iberian peninsula (3rd century BC); applied to toponyms, linguistic roots and populations.
- Pyrenean continental salt flats
- Traditional exploitations of common salt by solar evaporation of subsoil brine, characteristic of the Aragonese and Catalan Pyrenees between the 8th century BC and 20th century AD. The main ones were Naval (Huesca), Salinas de Sin (Huesca), Cardona (Barcelona, rock salt mine) and Gerri de la Sal (Lleida). The system employed decantation pools, crystallisation eras and drying warehouses, with production concentrated in the summer months. Pyrenean salt supplied for centuries the entire northern peninsula and southwestern France.
Sources
- Mata Almonacid, P. — La sal en la historia de Aragón
If you have a correction or an observation about this information,
please write to us through the form at the foot of the site.
We will grow more precise thanks to your contribution.
Camino Catalán por San Juan de la Peña