Village
Sabiñánigo is a municipality in the province of Huesca, the capital of the comarca of Alto Gállego and the heart of the historic Serrablo region, famous for its Mozarabic churches. With 9,695 inhabitants and 586.8 km², it is the largest municipal area in the province; it sits on the right bank of the Gállego river, at the outlet of the Valle de Tena, at 780 metres of altitude, surrounded by Pyrenean valleys and pre-Pyrenean mountains exceeding 1,900 metres, such as the Sierra de Guara, whose natural park occupies part of the municipal area. Its origin is Roman, linked to a 2nd-century military mansio next to the road that connected Osca with the baths of Panticosa. The first record of its name, Savignaneco, dates from 1035.
Monument
The church of San Pedro de Lárrede stands next to the hamlet of Lárrede, about 7 km from Sabiñánigo (Huesca), to which it belongs, and is the most characteristic example of the so-called churches of the Serrablo, a group in Mozarabic and early Romanesque style from the 10th-11th centuries whose stylistic affiliation — Mozarabic architecture or Lombard Romanesque — remains debated among art historians. Dated to around the middle of the 11th century, it is characterised by the absence of figurative sculpture, thick rounded mouldings and round-arched openings; at the apse it has an arcade with a frieze of long vertical billets acting as a cornice. Unlike other churches of the group, it has a Latin-cross plan due to a later extension, which also converted the base of the tower into a chapel. It was declared a monumento histórico-artístico (a heritage protection category used before Spain's current Historical Heritage Law) in 1931 and restored in 1933.
Monument
Mozarabic church from the 10th-11th centuries, the northernmost of the Serrablo group and possibly one of the oldest; of the original building only the bell tower survives, with tripartite horseshoe-arched windows, and part of the south wall, the rest having been rebuilt in the 1970s by the Asociación Amigos de Serrablo.
Monument
The church of San Pedro de Lasieso is in fact a pair of adjoining churches, in the village of Lasieso, in the municipality of Sabiñánigo: the smaller one, Mozarabic, from the 10th century, and the larger one, Romanesque, built around 1080 when Count Sancho Ramírez founded the Augustinian abbey of San Pedro; the Mozarabic bell tower preserves pierced windows and a frieze of roll mouldings that is repeated on the apse. In 1982 the group formed by this church and nine others in the Huesca municipalities of Sabiñánigo and Biescas, such as those of San Juan de Busa and San Bartolomé de Gavín, was declared a monumento histórico-artístico de carácter nacional (a heritage protection category used before Spain's current Historical Heritage Law), and today it holds the status of Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
Parish church dedicated to the apostle San Andrés, in the village of Satué, within the municipality of Sabiñánigo (Huesca), an example of the Romanesque of the so-called Larredense circle, the Romanesque-Mozarabic current of the Serrablo. It was built between 1050 and 1060 and was dependent on the Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña. Its nave is built of ashlar and ends in a semicircular choir decorated with five blind arches supporting a frieze; the sides are supported by two buttresses and the Romanesque portal opens on the south side, while the tower is a later addition. Protected as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1982, it suffered damage during the Civil War and was fully restored in the 1970s with the help of the Amigos de Serrablo association.
Monument
Church of Santa Eulalia de Orós Bajo, in Mozarabic or Lombard Romanesque style from the 11th-12th centuries, one of the latest and most elaborate examples of the Serrablo group; notable is the semicircular apse with blind arcading and pilaster strips already Romanesque in feel. It is part of the group of the churches of the Serrablo, fourteen churches built between the mid-10th and mid-11th centuries, which are among the oldest Christian churches preserved in Spain. It is located in the small village of Orós Bajo, with barely twenty-two inhabitants, on the left bank of the Gállego river, at the start of the Valle de Tena, one kilometre from the Os Lucás waterfall, much visited by tourists and canyoners.
Monument
The Centro de Interpretación de las Iglesias de Serrablo, dedicated to explaining the group of between fifteen and twenty Mozarabic churches of the comarca of Alto Gállego — declared a Conjunto histórico-artístico (a heritage protection category used before Spain's current Historical Heritage Law) in 1982 — is housed in the old forge of the village of Lárrede, very close to the church of San Pedro. Unlike other cultural facilities, it has no fixed opening hours: it remains open at all times and can be visited whenever desired, which makes it easier to complete the visit to the surrounding churches without depending on opening times.
Curiosity
A route through nearly eighteen churches and hermitages around Sabiñánigo (Alto Gállego), built between the 10th and 11th centuries and classified, according to scholars, as Mozarabic or as an early Romanesque style with Lombard and Hispano-Muslim influence. They are simply structured temples, with a single rectangular nave of modest size, closed by a semicircular apse. The Asociación Amigos de Serrablo, founded in 1971, drove their recovery from ruin, and most were declared Monumento Histórico-Artístico (a heritage protection category, now part of the Bien de Interés Cultural) on 29 September 1982, except for the one at Lárrede, already protected since 1931.
Monument
The Museo de Serrablo, officially the Ángel Orensanz and Arts of Serrablo Museum, is an ethnological museum housed in a typical 19th-century house of the Aragonese Pyrenees known as Casa Batanero, on the Puente de Sabiñánigo. It opened in 1979 thanks to the collaboration between the Amigos de Serrablo Association, which contributed a large collection of folk craftwork from the comarca, and the sculptor Ángel Orensanz, who donated the house and a group of his works. Conceived as a living museum and a starting point for trails through the area's abandoned villages and the Ruta de Iglesias de Serrablo, it brings together sections devoted to agriculture, herding, textiles, folk medicine, traditional music and popular religiosity, as well as an ethnobotanical garden and a specialised library.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Sabiñánigo in honour of Santiago Apóstol, from 24 July. On the Saturday closest to 19 January bonfires are lit for San Sebastián, and on 25 June the town takes part in the pilgrimage of Santa Orosia that sets out from Yebra de Basa.
Monument
On the old road from El Puente to Yebra de Basa, in the municipal district of Sabiñánigo, stands the zoque de Santa Orosia: a small rectangular chapel-oratory whose round-arched opening is closed by an iron grille guarding the saint's altar.
Monument
Sabiñánigo's town hall has its origin in the old Casa del Concejo, completed in 1605. The building stands in the San Feliciano district, next to other constructions of the same period, such as the Casa Abacial, from 1589, and the Baroque parish church of San Hipólito.
Activity
Sabiñánigo celebrates the Hogueras de San Sebastián on the Saturday nearest 19 January, its winter festival, as well as the Romería de Santa Orosia in June and the patronal festival of Santiago in July.
Curiosity
Sabiñánigo, in the Alto Gállego comarca, underwent intense chemical and metallurgical industrial activity during the 20th century that completely transformed the municipality. In 1920 EIASA (Energía e Industrias Aragonesas) was founded, a Franco-Spanish company that set up a chemical plant where the synthesis of ammonia from hydrogen was achieved for the first time in the world. Years later AESA joined it, the first Spanish company to produce rolled aluminium. The arrival of these factories attracted numerous immigrant workers and sent the population soaring: from 280 inhabitants in 1900 it rose to 1,768 in 1940 and 6,184 in 1960. That industrial past remains part of the town's identity.
Monument
Historic bridge over the River Aurín, in the municipal district of Sabiñánigo.
Nature
The Aurín rises at 2,100 m at the Ibón de Bucuesa, in the sierra de la Partacua, and after forming the valle de Acumuer joins the Gállego north of Sabiñánigo; it is one of the main tributaries that determine the flow of the upper Gállego. Its confluence with the Gállego was strategic for defending the route to the Panticosa spa.
Historical milestone
The opening of the station in 1893 turned a small place in the Serrablo into the communications hub of the upper Gállego and was the first of the two events that explain its later transformation into the comarca's industrial town.
Historical milestone
Energía e Industrias Aragonesas raised from 1918 beside the station a chlorate factory taking advantage of the hydraulic power of the Gállego; within a few decades it multiplied the municipality's population and completely changed the valley's landscape.
Historical milestone
Cultural association founded on the 21st of May 1971 amid the revaluing of traditional heritage promoted in the 1960s by local historians such as Antonio Durán Gudiol and Julio Gavín, following the emigration of the mountain rural populations towards urban areas. Based in Sabiñánigo, it rescued from ruin around twenty medieval churches of the Serrablo, for which it has maintained a restoration workshop-school since 1985, and it built the Ángel Orensanz and Artes del Serrablo museums, in Sabiñánigo, and the Julio Gavín Drawing museum, in Larrés. It has received the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts from the Ministry of Culture, among other distinctions, and is a collaborating centre of the Institute of Upper Aragon Studies.