This paper focuses attention on a small group of silver pennies of Æthelred II, king of England, minted c. 990, found at Roncesvalles in northern Spain, and a silver dirham of the caliph Hisham II of Córdoba, minted c. 1000, found on the site of an important abbey which flourished at the same time in south-western England. No direct connection can be made between the two finds; but their significance is explored here as evidence for contactof some kind between England and Spain in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.