Acerca de la voz <i>ponentino</i>

This work studies a very specific use of the word ponentino: It is used as a synonym of ‘Spaniard’ or, in a slightly more general context, as a word to refer to ‘people from the Western Mediterranean’, where Western Mediterranean stands for the Mediterranean sea stretching to the west of Sicily. Therefore, such a use of the word splits the interior sea into two halves, which do neither correspond with the old division between the Western Empire and the Byzantine Empire nor the clash between the Christian world and the Ottoman Empire. We propose an Italian origin for this particular use of the word