Logbook · 8 places

What to see and do in Bielsa

What to see and do in Bielsa (Sobrarbe, Huesca): 8 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 2 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

When to go to Bielsa: festival calendar

February: Carnival of Bielsa (February)

How far each place is from the centre of Bielsa

Church of Bielsa 50 m
Pineta Valley 12 km

Towns near Bielsa

What to see in Tella-Sin 10 km · 4 places
What to see in Gistaín 11 km · 4 places
What to see in Plan 11 km · 6 places
What to see in San Juan de Plan 12 km · 4 places
What to see in Puértolas 12 km · 6 places
What to see in Laspuña 15 km · 4 places
What to see in Fanlo 20 km · 5 places
What to see in Sahún 21 km · 2 places

Spain › Aragon › Huesca › Sobrarbe › Bielsa

What to see and do in Bielsa

Bielsa
Village
Bielsa is a Pyrenean town in Huesca, in Sobrarbe, gateway to the valle de Pineta and famous for its ancient carnival of trangas and madamas; it has 479 inhabitants (INE 2025) and part of its territory lies within the parque nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido. At the confluence of the ríos Cinca y Barrosa, on the moraine of a glacial valley, it is of medieval origin: in 1191 Alfonso II de Aragón granted fourteen miners a settlement charter to work silver mines, with permission to build a town, castle and mills. It enjoyed its heyday in the early 14th century, when Jaime II granted it the privilege of holding a fair in 1310, before being depopulated by the plague in 1348. During the Civil War it was razed by the bombing of the rebel side in the Bolsa de Bielsa, and rebuilt afterwards.
Pineta Valley
Nature
The Pineta Valley is a U-shaped Pyrenean valley of glacial origin, located in Sobrarbe, east of the Monte Perdido massif; its head forms part of the Ordesa and Monte Perdido National Park, together with the Ordesa Valley, the Añisclo Canyon and the Escuaín Gorges. It runs in a straight line for more than twelve kilometres from the Pineta Cirque to Bielsa, hemmed in between steep ridges of up to 3000 metres, such as the Sierra de las Tucas, where the Tres Marías stand out. At its head, waterfalls follow one another up to the Pineta Cirque and Balcony and the frozen lake of Marboré. It is the most accessible sector of the park, since a road runs from Bielsa to the bottom of the valley, where the Monte Perdido National Parador is located; there the Cinca river is also born, in the Marboré glacier.
Carnival of Bielsa
Activity
One of the most renowned Pyrenean carnivals, considered a celebration of immemorial age, which managed to survive despite the Francoist ban on carnivals in 1939. It begins after Christmas, on 17 January, the feast of San Antón, when the goluchos appear announcing its start, and centres on the making of a puppet, Cornelio Zorrilla, hung from the town hall window until he is tried and burned on Sunday night. Its protagonists are the trangas, unmarried young men symbolising fertility dressed in the skin and horns of a billy goat with their faces blackened, and the madamas, dressed in white. After a period of decline during the dictatorship, the carnival regained its central role in the valley from the 1980s onward.
Church of Bielsa
Monument
16th-century parish church of la Asunción de Nuestra Señora, remodelled on several occasions without losing its Pyrenean character, with a tower topped by a pyramid.
Festivities of Bielsa
Activity
The patron saint festivities of Bielsa are held on 15 August, the feast of la Asunción to whom the parish church is dedicated; the village is also famous for its Carnival of trangas and madamas, one of the oldest in the Pyrenees.
Transhumance in Sobrarbe
Curiosity
The transhumance tradition that took livestock from the Pyrenees down to the lowlands in winter, still alive in the Bielsa valley.
The Pocket of Bielsa
Historical milestone
The battle of the Bolsa de Bielsa (Bielsa Pocket) was fought between April and June 1938 in Alto Aragón. After the collapse of the Huesca front under the rebel offensive of March, the 43rd Republican Division, under the command of militia major Antonio Beltrán Casaña, El Esquinazau, was left encircled at the headwaters of the Cinca and Cinqueta rivers facing the 3rd Navarre Division. With barely seven thousand men and four guns against fourteen thousand enemy soldiers and thirty guns, it resisted for two months in isolation thanks to the terrain and Republican tenacity, after halting the Francoist advance on the 6th of April in an ambush at Fanlo. On the 15th of June 1938 incendiary bombings left Bielsa in ashes, and in the early hours of the 16th the last combatants crossed into France.
Kid goat from the highland pastures of Bielsa
Food and drink
The goats that climb to the high pastures of the Pineta and Barrosa valleys give a kid with pale, lean meat, which is stewed in a caldereta with garlic and paprika or roasted whole during the village festivities.