Barbastro (

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

: ''Barbastrum'' or ''Civitas Barbastrensis'', Aragonese: ''Balbastro'') is a city in the Somontano county, province of Huesca, Spain. The city (also known originally as Barbastra or Bergiduna) is at the junction of the rivers Cinca and Vero.

History

An ancient Celtiberian city called '' Bergidum'' or ''Bergiduna'', in Roman times Barbastro (now called ''Brutina'') was included in the

Hispania Citerior Hispania Citerior (English: "Hither Iberia", or "Nearer Iberia") was a Roman province in Hispania during the Roman Republic. It was on the eastern coast of Iberia down to the town of Cartago Nova, today's Cartagena in the autonomous community of ...

region, and later of

Hispania Tarraconensis Hispania Tarraconensis was one of three Roman provinces in Hispania. It encompassed much of the northern, eastern and central territories of modern Spain along with modern North Region, Portugal, northern Portugal. Southern Spain, the region now ...

. After the fall of the

Western Roman Empire In modern historiography, the Western Roman Empire was the western provinces of the Roman Empire, collectively, during any period in which they were administered separately from the eastern provinces by a separate, independent imperial court. ...

, it was part of the Visigoth kingdom. Barbastro and the Barbitaniya area were overtaken by Musa bin Nusair in 717, as part of the

Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...

push to conquer northern states of the Marca Hispanica and the name Madyar was given to the town. It was later settled by the Banu Jalaf who made it the capital of the Emirate of Barbineta and Huesca until 862, and was known as the Emirate of Brabstra until 882. In 1064, Sancho Ramírez, King of Aragón, and his Frankish Christian forces, led by William VIII of Aquitaine and Le Bon Normand, invaded the city, which at the time was part of the emirate of Zaragoza. This attack was known as the Siege of Barbastro. Contemporary sources state that 50,000 people were killed or captured in the attack, but modern historians view this as an exaggeration since the whole population of the town probably did not exceed 8,000. The following year, however, it was reconquered by the Moors. In 1101 it was captured permanently by Peter I of Aragon, who made it a bishopric seat. Barbastro since then has followed the history of Aragon and Spain. In the Middle Ages, a Sephardic Jewish community thrived in Barbastro, suffering little compared to other Jewish populations in Spain. The first written record of a Jewish presence dates to 1144. After the Disputation of Tortosa, the Jewish community ceased to exist because they had all become conversos. The old synagogue, however, became a center for converso life. During the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

51 Catholic Claretians were executed in Barbastro by militia of the Popular Front. In

Homage to Catalonia ''Homage to Catalonia'' is a 1938 memoir by English writer George Orwell, in which he accounts his personal experiences and observations while fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Covering the period between December 1936 and June 1937, Orwell re ...

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

describes a stop in the town on his way back from the front:

I had a day to put in to Barbastro, for there was only one train a day. Previously I had seen Barbastro in brief glimpses, and it had seemed to me simply a part of the war — a grey, muddy, cold place, full of roaring lorries and shabby troops. It seemed queerly different now. Wandering through it I became aware of pleasant tortuous streets, old stone bridges, wine shops with great oozy barrels as tall as a man, and intriguing semi-subterranean shops where men were making cartwheels, daggers, wooden spoons, and goatskin water- bottles. ..And at the back of the town there was a shallow jade-green river, and rising out of it a perpendicular cliff of rock, with houses built into the rock, so that from your bedroom window you could spit straight into the water a hundred feet below. Innumerable doves lived in the holes in the cliff.

Numerous socialist, republican and communist activists were jailed and executed in the following years after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Barbastro's economy flourished until the early 20th century, when a period of decline began, ending only in the 1960s due to the growth of agricultural production.

Notable residents

*Bartolomé and Lupercio de Argensola, brothers, historians and poets who were part of the Spanish ''siglo de oro'', a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain. *Antonio Ricardos Carrillo de Albornoz, was a famous Spanish army general, who lived in the 18th century. * Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, an institution of the Roman Catholic Church. *María Pilar Crespí Pérez, chemist by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and teacher in the Colegio Estudio. Wife of Don Antonio Corróns Rodríguez, Ph.D., and mother of D. Pablo Antonio Corróns Crespí (AENOR) and D. Jorge Antonio Corróns Crespí (Proteyco Ibérica, S.A.).

Twin towns

* Saint-Gaudens, Haute-Garonne

References

Sources

* *The Historic Atlas of Iberia

External links