| Resumo: | In this research, we study the real-time development of the assibilation of prepausal /ɾ/ in the Spanish spoken in the state of Guanajuato. For this purpose, we analyse data on the Spanish spoken in the cities of Guanajuato (capital), Pénjamo (southwest) and San Luis de la Paz (northeast) from both a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews collected in 2019 and from interviews conducted in the same towns in 1972-1973 for the Atlas lingüístico de México (Lope Blanch 1990-2000). Our working hypothesis is that assibilation has spread in the state of Guanajuato by relocation. The data provided by both real time and apparent time have allowed us to corroborate this hypothesis, with San Luis de la Paz being the locality where assibilation is just reaching its greatest vitality. As for other sociolinguistic dimensions of this process, we have once again confirmed that it is women who adopt the assibilant variants of /ɾ/ at a highest rate. Finally, on a purely linguistic level, our findings point to the fact that it is the front vowels /i e/ as a previous phonetic context and the lexical items of verbal category that are the linguistic variables favouring assibilation.
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