ALAVA, one of the Basque Provinces of northern Spain. Pop. (193o) io4,176; area, 1,176sq.m.; density per sq.m., 88.6. The countship of Trevino (i9osq.m.) in S. Alava belongs to the province of Burgos. Alava (Basque araiiar, country set among mountains) is in the west and north-west of a district of mountain and valley, drained by the rivers Boyas and NerviOn. The centre of the province is the large, fertile plain of Vitoria which con tinues to the west the structural trough separating the Sierra de Aralar, on the north, from the Sierra de Andia, on the south. The Montes de Vitoria separate this plain from the lower plain of Trevino, a dried-up lake basin running east from the Ebro at Miranda and bounded on the south by the Sierras de Tolono and de Cantabria. South of these sierras lies the lowest of the three plains of the province, the Alavese Rioja, with a water-frontage on the Ebro between Haro and Logrono.
Formerly a lordship, governed by an elective senor, Alava was incorporated in Castile in 1332 at the request of the electoral corporation of clergy and nobility, who celebrated with Alfonso XI. of Castile the Convention of Arriaga defining administrative relations between the lordship and Castile. The modern province is in many respects transitional between the Basque country and Castile. Castilian is the ordinary language except in the north.
Rainfall is fairly regular, except in the Alavese Rioja. About 2 7 % of the soil of the province is cultivated, producing wheat (64% of the cereal area, 1924), barley, oats and sugar-beet; maize is grown on the Bizcayan and Guipuzcoan border only. Agricultural methods are, for Spain, progressive, owing to the educative effect of sugar-beet cultivation, and artificial fertilizers and modern ploughs are in general use. The wine of the province is renowned, especially that of the Alavese Rioja; attacks of phylloxera have diminished the area devoted to viticulture, but more than ii,000 acres (1924) have been replanted with Ameri can stocks. Forests of chestnut, oak and beech, controlled by the provincial authority, and rough pastures occupy 46% of the province. Livestock in 1925 included 32,042 horned cattle, 90,075 sheep, 32,891 goats and 31,136 swine. Goats and sheep are ex ported to Barcelona, cattle to the market of Bilbao. Irrigation is not in use except for horticulture, but the streams are har nessed to supply electric power and light. Salt and asphalt are worked; lignite, important in the war-time shortage of coal, is no longer profitable. Steel, pig-iron and puddled iron are produced (total value, 1923, 2,867,289 pesetas); and there are manufac tures of beds, furniture, railway carriages, matches, paper, sweets and woollen and cotton goods. Bread-stuffs, colonial prod ucts and machinery are largely imported. In Alava the rate of illiteracy is only 16.24%; there are secondary schools at Vitoria, the capital (pop. 1930, 40,641), which is the only town of more than 3,50o inhabitants, and good normal schools for teachers of both sexes. (See BASQUES and BASQUE PROVINCES.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.—M. Risco, in vol. 33 of Hispania Sagrada by H. Bibliography.—M. Risco, in vol. 33 of Hispania Sagrada by H. Florez and others ; A. A. Salazar, Cattilogo de las obras referentes a las provincias deAlava y Navarra (1887, bibl.) .