The application of well articulated models of analysis to the whole of the Cantabrian Prehistory brought about in the 1980s a great step forward in the knowledge of the period we are considering, the passage from the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic. When considering this, we have to take into special account the contribution of investigators such as J. González-Echegaray, F. Bernaldo de Quirós or V. Cabrera among others. The incorporation of new deposits to the corpus of settlements to be considered and the great call for reflection that the well known datings of the Castillo Cave (soon followed by those relative to L'Arbreda, Abric Romani or La Viña, among others) led to make us revise periodically our models. We possibly became obsessed with looking for a paradigm that would explain the whole of the complex situations that took place chronologically between 40.000 and 30.000 B.P. In this article we will try to summarize some of the key problems we observed in the Eastern Cantabrian and the Western Pyrenees, always on the basis of contrasting the information available about the settlements of Labeko Koba and Lezetxiki, which are considerably different, as we will see below.
