Asturleonese

Asturleonese is the Ibero-Romance culture of the old Kingdom of León, covering Asturias highlands and plains around León, Salamanca and Zamora, where its Leonese, Asturian and Extremaduran varieties form a dialect continuum. Its speakers descend from the Astures, who resisted Augustus in the Cantabrian Wars before adopting garrison Latin; León grew out of the camp of the Legio VII Gemina.

In 910 the kings of Asturias moved their capital from Oviedo to León, creating the kingdom of that name, which carried the Reconquista south beyond the Douro and Sistema Central into Extremadura, where military orders settled the new frontier. Castile broke away in 931 and Portugal in 1139, and from 1230 León joined Castile in personal union under Ferdinand III, briefly challenged in 1296–1300; it nevertheless kept its own laws and assemblies as a constituent realm until 1833.

Meanwhile Castilian steadily displaced Leonese from towns and documents, confining it to village speech across the Asturian mountains and the León countryside.