Huesca - History

History

Huesca's pre-Roman Iberian name was Bolskan. It was 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) and fell under Caesaraugusta's jurisdiction. Pliny alone 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 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 It seems to have possessed silver mines, unless the argentum Oscense here mentioned merely refers to the minted silver of the town.

18th century Spanish historian Enrique Flórez, however, 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 the opinion that "Oscense" in these phrases means "Spanish", being a corruption of "Eus-cara".

The fully Romanised city, with its forum in the Cathedral square, was made a municipium by decree of Augustus in 30 BC. It was renamed Wasqah during the period of Arab domination, when the fortified city was a stronghold defending the frontier against the Christian counts and local kings of the Pyrenees. In 1094 Sancho Ramirez built the nearby Montearagón castle with the intention of laying siege to Wasqah; here he met his death by a stray arrow as he was reconnoitring the city's walls. It was conquered in 1096 by Peter I of Aragon.

In 1354, King Peter IV of Aragon chartered the University of Huesca, which initially had a faculty of theology. The school expanded, but by the end of the 16th century was eclipsed by the University of Zaragoza. The university was abolished in 1845.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) the "Huesca Front" was the scene of some of the worst fighting between the Republicans and Franco's army. The city was besieged by the Republicans, George Orwell among them (see below) but never fell.