This contribution describes the crucial moment in the founding phase of Ibero-Romance text culture, namely the transition from mere inscription to free, independent writing in the vernacular. This transition, which took place between 1100 and 1250, is a phase of dependent in-scripturation carried by the elaborative implications of translation. In the case of the Iberian Peninsula, we are not only faced with transfer from medieval Latin texts but also from French and Occitan texts into the regional vernaculars. Many of the DT domains enumerated in the Inventaire systématique des premiers documents des langues romanes can be found: epic and lyric, statute books and charters, hagiography and bible translation, even historiography, instructive literature and letters. The political and cultural background is marked by the Reconquista, the Cluniac renaissance and the introduction of systematic Roman Law into the Peninsula.