The cartularies of Valpuesta are two medieval Spanish cartularies which belonged to a monastery in the locality of Valpuesta in what is now the province of Burgos, Castile and León, Spain. The cartularies are called the Gótico and the Galicano from the type of script used in each. They are housed in the National Archives of Spain.
The Cartularies of Valpuesta are a series of 12th-century documents which, in turn, are copies of earlier documents, some of which date back to the 9th century. These cartularies contain an abundance of words of a developing Romance dialect and a copious list of place names in the Valley of Gaubea and the surrounding area. Probably no other codex of that period offers so many tokens of an incipient Romance language with similarities with modern Spanish. The scribes did not write in pure, erudite Latin, but rather in a more evolved, Romance-like Latin, to be better understood by the common people. The transcription took place during the formative period of the Kingdom of Castile, and it might reflect the early evolution of the Castilian dialect, although a written standard had yet to be established.
