Jaca

Jaca's name goes back to the Iacetani, a people that the Greek geographer Strabo counted among the best known of the Ebro basin; coins inscribed iaka were minted here from the second half of the 2nd century BC. The Roman consul Cato the Elder took the town in 195–194 BC, and under Rome it guarded the roads through the Pyrenees. After the Muslim conquest the mountain valleys stayed in Christian hands under Carolingian protection, and by 799 a local count, Aureolo, had established an independent county.

That county grew into Aragon. Ramiro I made Jaca a city and the capital of his kingdom, a synod met here in 1063, and his son Sancho Ramírez gave it its fuero, its charter of rights, in 1077, built a royal palace and began the cathedral. The town lay where the road from France to Santiago de Compostela met the road from Pau to Zaragoza, and it lived from pilgrims, tolls and trade. When the kingdom moved south the capital went to Huesca in 1096, but Jaca remained a market town for its valleys. Its Jewish community, the oldest in Aragon, lasted until the expulsion of 1492.

Plague and fires in the late Middle Ages brought a long crisis. As the border with France hardened, Philip II ordered a pentagonal citadel built in 1592, and Jaca became a garrison town. The railway from Zaragoza arrived in 1893 and was extended to Canfranc in 1928. In December 1930 the Jaca uprising, a mutiny demanding the end of the monarchy, was put down; in the Civil War the town fell to the rebel side, and more than 300 victims of the repression were buried in a mass grave in its cemetery. From the 1970s tourism and skiing transformed the town.

Jacetanos are conscious that their town is where Aragon began, and the past is celebrated in the street. The First Friday of May recalls a legendary victory over a Muslim army with a meal on the field where the battle is said to have been fought and a costumed historical procession; it was already mentioned by Alfonso X in the 13th century. On 25 June, the feast of the patron saint Santa Orosia, villages of the Campo de Jaca join a procession with their parish crosses, a custom kept for centuries.

Music and dance bring in visitors from abroad. The Festival Folklórico de los Pirineos, founded in 1963 after Jaca was twinned with Oloron-Sainte-Marie across the mountains, was held in the two towns in alternate years and since 2009 takes place in Jaca in odd-numbered years, with folk groups from around twenty countries; it was declared a festival of national tourist interest in 1988. An early music festival fills the churches along the Camino de Santiago with music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque.

Winter sport is part of the town's identity. Jaca hosted the Winter Universiades of 1981 and 1995 and the 2007 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival, has staged world figure-skating championships on its ice rink, and bid four times for the Winter Olympics. The Club Pirineista Mayencos, founded in 1956, is one of Spain's leading mountain sports clubs.

About 14,000 people live in the municipality, which counted 14,024 residents in 2025. Besides the town it takes in dozens of small villages, several of them now uninhabited, and the residents of the Astún ski resort. In 1495 the town had about 700 inhabitants; its strongest growth came in the 20th century.

From the early 1970s Jaca changed from a small provincial and garrison town into the gateway to a mountain sports area, with the resorts of Astún and Candanchú within a short drive. The building boom of the 1970s and 1980s brought the ice rink, a conference centre and many second homes, and it was controversial: many felt the town lost much of its original character to developers. Tourism and services now drive the economy, alongside the army, whose Military School of Mountain and Special Operations is based here.

The year follows the seasons. Winter brings skiers and summer brings walkers and holidaymakers, and in between Jaca is a working town whose life centres on the old streets around the cathedral. The Jacetano football club plays at the Oroel ground.

Jaca's cooking was shaped by shepherding and livestock and by long, hard winters, which favour preserved foods and filling dishes. Lamb is the region's signature meat, above all ternasco de Aragón, roast lamb, and the lamb's tripe is used for chiretas, popular throughout the Aragonese mountains. Poultry and small game also matter: stews of hen or hare are part of the mountain kitchen.

Typical recipes include wild boar stewed in a walnut sauce, asparagus filled with mushrooms, salads of roasted vegetables, roast lamb with patatas a lo pobre, and bacalao ajoarriero, made with salt cod. The wider Aragonese kitchen adds cured ham from Teruel, olive oil and unusual vegetables such as local chard, borage and cardoon.

The bars of the old town serve tapas, and the town hosts a contest for the tapas and cazoletas of the Aragonese Pyrenees. Its restaurants and cafés serve a steady flow of travellers on their way to the mountains.