Albéniz, Álava

Albéniz is a village in Álava, Basque Country, Spain. It is one of the typical villages of the Alava Plain nestled in the municipality of Asparrena. The village surrounds a svelte church with its tower and it is enclosed by the Umandia, Albéniz, Olano and Ballo mountains. It has a few districts such as San Juan and San Bartolomé as well as scatterings of population in Moñete, Orrao and La Estación.HistoryIn its sometimes not well documented history, there are indications that the Roman road from Bordeaux to Astorga once crossed through this town. This old route is currently the base of the Madrid-Irun railway and highway N-I.It has been suggested that the current people of Albéniz correspond to the population of Albanians, as suggested by Plinio, because of the similarity between its name and the important Roman mansion of Alba. Additionally the innumerable archaeological remains found within the territory or the indication by Lorenzo de Prestamero of how he saw, at the end of the 13th century a tombstone, now defunct, in the altar of the hermitage of Andra Mari of Orrao, add credence to this position. To reinforce this idea, in the Araia Church there are four stones as well as many other fragments of Roman inscriptions, however, because of their poor state of preservation, it is not possible to understand their meaning.Another detail that can reaffirm the relationship between Albéniz and the former Alba may be that the distance that the Roman Antonino mentions between the Tulonio, now Alegeria, Dulantzi and Alba mansions was 3 leagues or 12 miles, which is the actual distance between the two populations mentioned.As a further means of identification of the two names, a 1932 article in the Revista Internacional de los Estudios Vascos (International Journal of Basque Studies) mentioned in the chapter "El territorio de los vascos" (The Basques territories): "the towns of Tuboricum (Motrico), Tullonium (Alegeria ), Alba (Albéniz) close to Salvatierra..."