Huesca
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Huesca (Aragonese: Uesca; Latin: Osca; Greek: Ὄσκα, Ptol. ii. 6. § 68) is a city in Aragon, Spain. Huesca is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name.
History
Its pre-Roman Iberian name was Bolskan, the capital of the Ilergetes, in the north of Hispania Tarraconensis, on the road from Tarraco (modern Tarragona) and Ilerda (modern Lleida) to Caesaraugusta (modern Zaragoza) (Itin. Ant. pp. 391, 451), and under the jurisdiction of the last-named city. Pliny alone (iii. 3. s. 4) places the Oscenses in Vescitania, a district mentioned nowhere else. The city's name was rendered as Osca, and was a Roman colony, Urbs Victrix Osca, during the Roman Empire. Under the impetus of Quintus Sertorius, the renegade Roman and Iberian hero who made Osca his base, the city minted its own coinage and was the site of a prestigious school founded by Sertorius to educate young Iberians in Latin and Romanitas in general. We learn from Plutarch (Sert. c. 14) that it was a large town, and the place where Sertorius died. It is probably the town called Ileoscan (Ἰλεόσκαν) by Strabo, in an apparently corrupt passage (iii. p. 161; v. Ukert, vol. ii. pt. 1. p. 451.) It seems to have possessed silver mines (Livy xxxiv. 10, 46, xl. 43), unless the argentum Oscense here mentioned merely refers to the minted silver of the town. Florez, however (Med. ii. 520), has pointed out the impossibility of one place supplying such vast quantities of minted silver as we find recorded in ancient writers under the terms argentum Oscense, signatum Oscense; and is of opinion that "Oscense" in these phrases means "Spanish", by a corruption from the national name "Eus-cara". (Cf. Caes. B.C. i. 60; Vell. Pat. ii. 30; "Euskara", Basque for the Basque language.)
The fully Romanized city, with its forum in the Cathedral square was made a municipium by decree of Augustus in 30 BCE. The name became Wasqah during the Arab domination, when the fortified city was a frontier bastion against the Christian counts and local kings of the Pyrenees. In 1094 Sancho Ramirez built the nearby castle Montearagon with the intention of laying siege to Wasqah; here he met his death by a stray arrow as he was reconnoitering the city's walls. It was conquered in 1096 by Peter I of Aragon.
Modern Huesca
Huesca celebrates its main annual festival in San Lorenzo (Laurence)— a native of Huesca martyred in Rome, 268 AD— which falls on August 10. The fiesta starts on the 9th and finishes on the 15th. San Lorenzo, born in Huesca, was bishop of Roma and martyrized by Romans, burnt on a grill, so the grill is the symbol of this saint, and appears in many artistic expressions of the city.
It is also the birthplace of film director Carlos Saura and his brother Antonio Saura, contemporary artist.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) the "Huesca Front" was the scene of some of the worst fighting between Republicans and the rebels.
Churches of Huesca
Huesca is filled with churches.
- Cathedral (Catedral de la Transfiguración del Señor) in Gothic style begun by king Jaime I of Aragon around 1273 upon the ruined foundations of the mosque. Work continued until the fifteenth century, creating one of the architectural landmarks of northern Spain. The doorway of 1300-1313 has carvings of the Apostles. The interior has a triple nave and lateral chapels. It contains a magnificent high altar of alabaster carved to represent the Passion, made in 1520-1533 by Damián Forment. The cloister and the bell-tower are from the fifteenth century.
- Church of St. Peter (Iglesia de San Pedro el Viejo), erected between 1100-1241, is one of the oldest Romanesque structures in the Peninsula. It was rebuilt in the seventeenth century, but retains its cloister of 1140.
- Church of St. Lawrence (Iglesia de San Lorenzo), seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- Iglesia de Santo Domingo, in Baroque style.
- Iglesia de la Compañía San Vicente, seventeenth century.
- Ermita de Ntr. Sra. de Salas-M.H.A.-, románico y barroco
- Ermita de Loreto -M.H.A.-, cuna de San Lorenzo según la tradición
- Ermita de San Jorge -s. XVI-, en recuerdo de la batalla de Alcoraz
- Ermita de las Mártires
- Ermita de Santa Lucía
- Ermita de Jara, in ruins
- San Miguel, Romanesque tower
- Santa María de Foris, románico de transición
- Santa Cruz, Seminary, on Romanesque foundations.
- In the immediate neighbourhood are several old monasteries; that of Monti-Arajon containing in its crypt the tomb of king Alfonso I.
- About the present Huesca is a double line of ancient walls.
- The institute for secondary education occupies the building formerly devoted to the old university, and in one of its vaults is the famous "Bell of Huesca", said to have been constructed from the heads of insurgent nobles who were executed by King Ramiro II of Aragon.
Coffee in Huesca
Huesca is notable for the saying "Tomorrow we'll have a coffee in Huesca", which was a running joke among militiamen of the Spanish Civil War. In February 1938, George Orwell was stationed near the falangist-held Huesca as a member of the POUM militia. In Homage to Catalonia, Orwell writes about this running joke phrase, originally a naïvely optimistic comment made by one of the Spanish Republican generals. Orwell writes:
- Months earlier, when Siétamo was taken, the general commanding the Government troops had said gaily: 'Tomorrow we'll have a coffee in Huesca.' It turned out that he was mistaken. There had been bloody attacks, but the town did not fall, and [the phrase] had become a standing joke throughout the army. If I ever go back to Spain I shall make a point of having a cup of coffee in Huesca.
See also
External links
Reference
- Michael H. Crawford, 1985. Coinage and Money Under the Roman Republic in series Library of Numismatics (London: Methuen and Co. Ltd.), pages 84 - 102.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography by William Smith (1857).
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