The word “Mediterranean” has an extremely rich polysemy and is used with its meaning and its antonym: Thus, it is said for the inhabitants of a region. Cicero calls that which is in the middle of the land, far from the sea, the Mediterranean. But today, without ignoring the Latin etymology of the words “medius” and “terra”; It is generally used, with more or less accuracy, to indicate a relationship or belonging to the Mediterranean or to the lands on which it floats. Over time, the term took on a Copernican twist to the point of contrast: two thousand years ago, the Central Plateau could be described as the Mediterranean; Currently, this adjective denotes the coastline, coastline and islands of the Mediterranean. This Roman sect deserved, as Pliny the Younger pointed out, the “mare interius” or “internum” between Europe, Asia and Africa; or rather, southern Europe, western Asia and northern Africa. The cradle, supremacy, and centrality of Western civilization were accomplished in antiquity and the Middle Ages until the opening of Atlantic shipping, without underestimating the revival entailed by the opening of the Suez Canal (1869). For three millennia, successive thalassocracies (Phoenician, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Muslim, Aragonese, Turkish, Spanish, British) imposed their naval power in the Mediterranean. The Romans made the vast continental sea the crossroads of the vast empire, the “Mare Nostrum”; and, referring to Crete, they structured the sea rose or compass rose, which reached us with some Arabian vaccine (garbino or lebeche, jaloque).
With such exceptional diachrony, although the word “Mediterranean” has enormous polysemy, it is often infallible, beyond the semantic metonymy or transnomination metaphor. overdo it. For example, the statement that Iberia is the largest of the Mediterranean European peninsulas is common; statement that is not entirely valid; Not even half of that is true, since the length of the Atlantic coastline exceeds that of the Mediterranean. Errors and deep roots of greater significance not covered by the broad umbrella of ambiguity circulate freely and ubiquitously in both climatology and geobotany.
In climatology, the door was opened by the so-called geographical climatic classifications developed by the brilliant school of French regional geography. This climatic classification method was devised and disseminated by the famous French geographer Emmanuel de Martonne, who proposed it in his famous “Traité de géographie physics” (1909), the basic manual for the teaching of the discipline in France and other European countries for almost half a century. In essence, the procedure consists of describing a climate in the region in which it has a prototypical character, naming it by name, and extending its name by analogy to areas with similar climatic characteristics. The relevance of the approach conceived by Martonne lies in a synthetic and global, geographical perception of climatic reality; very efficient as long as there is a sufficiently complete and precise image of the prototype chosen. It has also been the subject of other criticisms and objections, such as the inappropriateness and sometimes misleading of the geographical names chosen; without confusing the translation of the same thing to bring together geographical facts that are no longer the same, with certain similarities. These arise more than in difficulties in the climates of what is called the Mediterranean, which in principle includes the so-called Portuguese, Hellenic and Syrian climates; Later, Syrian was excluded as it was considered dry and Californian was added. Of these climates, only Hellenic or Greek deserve the full Mediterranean name, while the inclusion of Portuguese and Californian species is completely unacceptable. Frankly, both have nothing to do with any Mediterranean. The mistake lies in ignoring the Mediterranean climates, whose common denominator is the presence of a dry summer, that this is not a feature of the Mediterranean, but the subtropical nature that most of the Mediterranean shares with planetary regions without an inland sea (California, Central Chile, Cape Region of South Africa, South Africa). South Australian border); but during the summer months, subtropical subsidence that blocks precipitation in some areas and others is hegemonic for latitudes near most of the Iberian Peninsula.
The mistake consists in establishing an inappropriate equivalence between the Mediterranean, which is a more comprehensive and less understood concept than the former, and the temperate dry-summer climates: practically all Mediterranean climates are temperate dry-summer climates; but not vice versa, because the former is a subset of the latter. The mistake is widely mirrored in the Iberian Peninsula because it is an almost general and well-established belief, although it is incorrect, that other climates, with the exception of oceanic and dry climates, are Mediterranean. The reality is very different: the rest, with the exception of some mountainous islands, temperate climates and dry summers, including inland; Those with Atlantic influence, and finally, on the surface, those that are literally Mediterranean. The width of the Mediterranean coast and pre-coastal fringes rarely exceeds one hundred kilometers. Therefore, in Alicante, it is not necessary to reach the surrounding plateau area, it is sufficient to reach Alto Vinalopó, where the hardening of the Villenese winter, without any presence, shows that continentalization has prevailed over a vanishing maritime moderation. It is no coincidence that some of the lowest absolute minimums and of course the highest annual temperature ranges (20-22ºC) correspond to the eastern half of the Peninsula, where the Atlantic influence is weakening and disappearing, and the Mediterranean Sea is countercurrent. The dominant flow from the west is not coming.
Widespread and deep-rooted climatic error has contaminated and falsified geobotanical terminology, which refers to much of the Iberian Peninsula where temperate climates prevail with continentalized dry summers or Atlantic influences. It is therefore an oversight and error to confirm that Cabañeros or Monfragüe, however common and frequent, constitute prototypical specimens of Mediterranean sclerophyll forests; because the truth is that these forests have a temperate climate and a dry subtropical affiliation with Atlantic roots rather than Mediterranean without cease to be sclerophyllous. The archetypal paradigm of the terminological confusion expressed is provided by the Central Mountain Range, whose precipitation is almost entirely of Atlantic origin and is located almost entirely in its western parts (Sierra de Gata, Peña de Francia). From there they decrease towards the east, because the further they move away from the ocean, the greater the longitudinal leeway, especially if another orographic overlap. It is clear that characterizing this chain as Mediterranean is a mistake; and its continuation, the use of this word to designate vegetation levels (thermo-Mediterranean, middle east, supra-Mediterranean, oro-Mediterranean, cryo-Mediterranean); likewise, xerophytic forest of quercineas, the most common and representative species of which is holm oak, as said.
Although unfounded and inappropriate denominations have gained a letter of nature due to their widespread and repeated use, and their use is so established and widespread that they cannot be reversed; It is true that its correction would be more than appropriate, meaningful, and suggestive: so, for example, to speak of sclerophyllous forests in temperate climates with dry summers, because the thick cuticle in the leaves of xerophytic quercines in holm oak This feature is ultimately attributed not only to the scarcity of summer precipitation, but also to the Atlantic Ocean. It is owed to subtropical subsidence, which is also responsible for the harshest and longest droughts that hinder and divert storms. Therefore, it does not seem futile or excessive to reiterate that dry summer is a sign of subtropical nature, not Mediterranean nature, given the existence and extent of the fault.