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The Route of Castilian language and its expansion in the Mediterranean
Dates
Incorporated into the programme in June 2002
Formally awarded certification as a "Cultural Route of the Council of Europe":
16 June 2004
Presentation
 In
about the 11th century, a student or a preacher wrote in
the margin of a Latin manuscript in one of the earliest
examples of the Castilian Romance language to have
survived to this day. This manuscript from the monastery
of San Milláñ de la Cogolla gained acceptance in another
monastery in the Province of Burgos at Santo Domingo de
Silos. Of all the languages spoken in the Iberian
Peninsula, Castilian, which was spread by the
Universities of Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcalá de
Henares, established a pedigree thanks to grammarians
like Antonio de Nebrija, and became a literary language,
the finest illustrations of which include the works of
Cervantes.
As the main vector of Iberian thought and culture, it
spread to Latin America thanks to Spain’s great sailors
and the conquistadors and has now become one of the main
languages of the American continent.
However, it also became an ingredient of people’s
identities in the form of "Ladino", a language which is
still spoken today and has been since the 16th century
by the community of Sephardic Jews, who were expelled
from the Kingdom of Spain and emigrated to regions all
around the shores of the Mediterranean.
These are the journeys which the Castilian language
route proposes to reveal to people in more detail by
means both of their physical manifestations in Spain and
other parts of the Mediterranean (monasteries,
universities, Jewish quarters) and of their intellectual
legacy (literature, and religious, musical and culinary
traditions).
 A Castilian language route has already been proposed as
a prestigious tourist project in Spain. Experts on
Sephardic heritage from a number of Mediterranean cities
(Tétouan, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Thessaloniki and Sofia)
are currently working together on schemes for joint
activities.
This authentic approach to the dissemination of a
language in a multi-cultural religious context is
entirely in keeping with the Council of Europe’s key
political goal of enhancing dialogue between religious
communities in the countries of the Mediterranean basin.
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