Introduction to the special issue

The idea for this special issue developed from a conversation at an inter-national workshop where this guest-editor, the general editor of this journal, and several other linguists working on Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Basque were present. The topic of the conversation was the perceived need to have a new linguistics journal focusing on the languages of the Iberian Peninsula (including their extra-Peninsular expansion). This, it was agreed, should be an international journal with a rigorous reviewing process, to ensure its quality. After considering several options, all of us thought that the recently established JOURNAL of Portuguese Linguistics could very well serve this purpose by expanding its purview to encompass the other languages that have their origin in the Peninsula, both Ibero-Romance and Basque. I agreed to edit a special issue with this coverage, as a way to jump-start the process