Jaca

Jaca, the most important municipal center in Alto Aragón (with a population of more than 12,000), is anything but sleepy. Bursting with ambition and blessed with the natural resources and first-rate facilities to express their relentless drive, Jacetanos are determined to make their city the site of a Winter Olympics someday. Founded in 1035 as the kingdom of Jacetania, Jaca was an important stronghold during the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula and proudly claims never to have bowed to the Moorish invaders. Indeed, the town still commemorates, on the first Friday of May, the decisive battle in which the appearance of a battalion of women, their hair and jewelry flashing in the sun, so intimidated the Moorish cavalry that they beat a headlong retreat.