Barbastro

Barbastro has been fought over for most of its existence. The Romans held it as part of Hispania Tarraconensis. Arab forces took it in 711, renamed it Barbaschter, and by 800 it had become a fortified power base and the capital of a district called Barbitania. For the next three centuries it sat at the contested edge between Christian Aragón and the Taifa of Zaragoza, changing hands repeatedly. The siege of 1064 — when Aragonese and Frankish forces took the city — is considered the first known call to crusade, an event that inspired the Old French epic poem *Le siège de Barbastre*, a manuscript of which survives in the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris. Muslim forces retook it in 1065; Aragón recovered it permanently in 1101, when King Pedro I made it a bishopric.

The city's most consequential moment came in 1137, when the betrothal of Petronila of Aragón to Count Ramon Berenguer IV of Barcelona was signed here in the Entremuro quarter — the act that created the Crown of Aragón. The English writer George Orwell recuperated from a war wound in Barbastro during the Spanish Civil War and wrote about the city's streets and daily life in *Homage to Catalonia*.

The Cathedral of Santa María de la Asunción is the city's main monument. Built between 1517 and 1533 by master builder Juan de Segura on the site of a former mosque, it is a Gothic-inspired building with Renaissance development: three naves of equal height, no dome or transept, and ribbed vaults carried on six columns roughly fifteen metres tall. The high altarpiece has a remarkable alabaster base begun by Damián Forment and completed after his death by his disciple Juan de Liceyre.

A few metres away stands the Episcopal Palace, an Aragonese-style building from a later century with a façade of three horizontal bands, arched gallery, large eave, and two balcony windows. On the same street, the Palacio de los Argensola is a 16th- and 17th-century manor house notable for its arched gallery and richly carved wooden eave; the celebrated poets Lupercio and Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola were born here.

Outside the centre, the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de El Pueyo is an ancient hilltop monastery that also functions as a viewpoint over the comarca and the peaks of the Huesca Pyrenees.

The Plaza de la Candelera, in the Entremuro quarter, is the oldest square in the city and the exact site where the 1137 betrothal was signed.

Buses stop at the station on Aragón Square. By car, take the Barbastro-Centre exit from the motorway or N-240; free parking is available near the cemetery, directly in front of the tourist office, and you can reach everything on foot from there. Local food worth seeking out includes chiretas (lamb stomach stuffed with spiced rice and meat, comparable to Scottish haggis), and the sweets crespillos, pastillo, and Biarritz cakes — the Biarritz cakes are the easiest to carry if you want to take something away.

Somontano wine is the area's other speciality. Coso Avenue and Mercado Square both have eating options to suit different budgets.