Iberian
and Roman,
hospitable and festive
Village of the province of Huesca,
placed in the Somontano (Down Mountains), along near to the
Alcanadre river. It has approximately 149 inhabitants and an
extension of. 29 Km2. Its altitude is 204 meters on the level of the
sea. It is distant from Huesca 30 kilometers. They are named pertusanos.
It is not yet somontano, but
Huesca flatness. To sixteen kilometers of the capital, in route
towards Barbastro, between Siétamo and Belillas,
the deflection for Pertusa is born, in the route of the promising
waters. The highway begins straight, to the right of the general road,
but very soon curves between holm oaks and olive groves. It dominates
the gray, that clears every so often to let see the green colour of
the seeded lands. Torres del Monte, Blecua and Antillón
are watched with pride, from its hills, on the narrow asphalt road.
At the end, Pertusa, with the Alcanadre river putting
it a wall, circumference of waters in accordance with the deep channel,
that gives almost a complete return to earth and the small village,
a small peninsula emerging in the left margin of the river. In front,
to the other side, in the highest summit, whitens the chapel of the
Virgin of the Victory with its bulrush arrows in the blue firmament.
It is necessary to double more curves
to arrive to the town, capricious goings and comings by asphalt and
to cross the bridge of five arches. The primitive flour industry of
Pertusa had some importance. The old mill would say it, although
no longer the murmur of the water is listened
when beating against the blades of the buns or water wheels under
vaulted cavity and the tooth no longer turns with its monotonous sound
to illuminate the new flour. We get up again and the river is down,
as in the abyss. A viewpoint on waters is the infantile park, behind
the back of the House of Village constructed in 1946. At some time
it was explained to me that the name of Pertusa meant “divided
stone”; and it would have sense since the Alcanadre river seems
to do this same, to divide the stone to break through there, in the
depression.
The origin of the village remained written
in the stone. Pertusa comes from the Roman splendor to the
architecture of the XVIth century. Roman is the name of the village.
It belonged to the mansion of the same name, in the first way of Antonio's
itinerar, in territory of the ilergetes already -Ilergetes
was one of the towns that occupied part of the Iberian
Peninsula before the arrival of the Romans-. It's sure that there
are remains of a Roman roadway, in a good condition of conservation.
  The crypt of the parochial of Santa
Maria is a pure Romanesque style and it is supposed that includes
the whole subsoil of the current church. The arches get lost between
walls that were raised later. The whole remaining building corresponds
between XVIth and XVIIth centuries, and even it is possible that there
are enough work of beginning of the XVIIIth. The cloister, although
with repairing and modern plasterings, speaks about collegiate church
of yesterday. Near to the church, but without forming set with it,
the haughty tower rises, with reliefs and friezes of undoubted value.
Well it deserves, together with the crypt, the declaration of national
monument.
The clock of the tower keeps on measuring
punctually the passage of time. Perhaps the years of major splendor
owed to its condition of barony of Pertusa, with domains in
different places of the region. In the XVth century, the barony was
of the Bardají, but from 1503 it passed to being property of
Saragossa. So much it is, that some historians considered Pertusa
like a neighborhood of Saragossa. The nuns of Santa Ann resided there and
had their convent, in the Renaissance big house that lodged the community,
dated in 1718.
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Pertusa, with its history of
centuries, is a village got into the scenery, almost an island in
the middle of the Alcanadre river, near to the aqueduct that
saves dreams of new irrigations. The routes of communication invite
to the trip, between Huesca and Barbastro, inland, to
thirty kilometers of the capital. To one hundred five km.of Saragossa.
There the holm oaks finish to transfer space to the olive groves.
Then, the clear mount, green in the springs and gilding in the falls.
The Summer attracts those that went away.
The hermitage of the Virgin of the Victory,
to the other side of the river, on the highest summit, is visible
from any place of Pertusa. Although of Iberian origin, Pertusa
- that was also named Partusa and Dertusa- corresponds
better with the Roman time, to be in the itinerary of the route coming
from Monsoon, that already is mentioned by Antonino. They are
remains of the stone bridge on the Alcanadre river, like irrefutable
testimony. Lope de Fortuñones was gentleman of the place in
1135. .
  Here prepared Jaime I his army,
according the journalists relate, to attack Panzano and Lascellas.
The place where great military concentration encamped is well-known
like Val of King. At that time the year 1255 ran. In 1395 the town
was sold by Maria de Luna, woman of Martin I, to Bernardino
de Pinos, that paid seventy and five thousand Barcelonan pays.
Three years later it returned to the real dominion, with the promise
of not being separated of Corona, in which case it would should
belong to the city of Saragossa. “Nevertheless - Ana Isabel Lapeña-
relates, Alfonso V yielded the town like payment of a debt
to Berenguer de Bardaxí, in whose family remained until 1503,
date in which, after a claim of his settlers, Saragossa and Pertusa
decided both the dependency second with respect to first, as far as
government and administration”.
This is the reason that Pertusa
uses identical shield that Saragossa, with the unique difference of
which in its silver bordure appears the legend “Barony and town of
Pertusa”.
 The lineage of this last name, corresponding
to noble native family of the own locality, documented from times
of Pedro II, uses shield military revolt, first and fourth
quarter of azure, with five pears on its natural colour and its stem,
and the second and third party, of silver, with three bars of gules
(rose color) loaded with three tops of golden arrow.
Pertusa celebrates its holidays
on the 15th and 16th of August, in honor of Nuestra Señora
de la Asunción. Although there are other holidays, for San
Blas and Santa Águeda.
 Have not lost either the tradition of
the bonfires of San Antón. They were lighting in the
different streets. Sometimes the fire lasts entire days with its corresponding
nights.
  The sighting of Pertusa, from
the highway, is surprising; when nothing seems to warn us that the
village is there above, raised, at the edge of the abyss that the
river has agreed with the step of the centuries.
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