Qualla: Barbastro https://qualla.com/barbastro en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:03 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/hero-small.webp Qualla: Barbastro https://qualla.com/barbastro Barbastro: Introduction https://qualla.com/barbastro/ Photo credit Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain, CC BY 2.0. Look up at the bell tower of Barbastro's cathedral and you are looking at two towers at once. The outer shell is Christian and hexagonal, raised in 1610. Sealed inside it stands something older and stranger: the narrow minaret of the mosque that occupied this ground before the cathedral, its inner stones still scorched black. The burn marks have a date. In 1366, when the mercenary captain Bertrand du Guesclin passed through and sacked the town, 306 people carried their belongings up into the tower to hide. The soldiers set it alight, and none came out. Over the centuries the same tower has served as minaret, belfry, jail, hideout for a secret society, and an anti-aircraft post. Even now, an old air-raid siren sounds from it at noon.

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Image: Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/sp2p-barbastro-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Barbastro: Four Walls and a Thousand Years https://qualla.com/barbastro/ Photo credit Morburre, CC BY-SA 3.0. Barbastro is a town that kept building rings around itself. It began as a Celtiberian settlement, became Roman Brutina, then passed to the Visigoths before Muslim forces took the Barbitaniya district in 717. The first fortress crowned the Barbacana hill in 811; a second wall went...

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Image: Morburre | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/sp2p-barbastro-four-walls-and-a-thousand-years.mp3 0:06 2 full Barbastro: A Village Inside the City https://qualla.com/barbastro/ Photo credit Public domain. Behind the cathedral lies the Entremuro, the oldest quarter, so quiet it feels like a village that a city grew around. Enter down the dark, narrow Hornos street and you pass a wall of alternating brick and stone that locals still call the Roman wall, though it was built that way ...

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Image: Public domain

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/sp2p-barbastro-a-village-inside-the-city.mp3 0:06 3 full Barbastro: Where a Kingdom Was Joined https://qualla.com/barbastro/ Photo credit Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain, CC BY 2.0. The Entremuro climb ends at Candelaria Square, a modest space with an outsized place in Spanish history. Here Petronila, the only daughter of King Ramiro II of Aragon, was betrothed to the Count of Barcelona, binding Aragon and Catalonia under a single crown. Their son would rule...

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Image: Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/sp2p-barbastro-where-a-kingdom-was-joined.mp3 0:06 4 full Barbastro: The River and the Table https://qualla.com/barbastro/ Photo credit Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain, CC BY 2.0. Barbastro sits where the Vero meets the Cinca, and the Vero once ran right against the backs of the houses. Before the river was walled in concrete to stop its violent floods, those buildings dropped sheer into the water. George Orwell, passing through during the Spanish Civil Wa...

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Image: Jesus Abizanda from Barbastro, Huesca, Spain | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/p/2/p/barbastro-wk/sp2p-barbastro-the-river-and-the-table.mp3 0:06 5 full