Jaca (Spanish pronunciation: ['xaka]; in Aragonese: Chaca or Xaca[2]) is a city of northeastern Spain in the province of Huesca, located near the Pyrenees and the border with France.

Jaca is an ancient fort on the Aragón River, situated at the crossing of two great early medieval routes, one from Toulouse to Santiago de Compostela and Pau to Zaragoza.

According to the atlas of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, Jaca was a town where minted coins were made[3] from the second half of the 2nd century BC, a small number of which are now in the British Museum.

By that time, the region of Jacetania would remain as a buffer zone in favour of the Carolingian Empire against Muslim dominions.

[7] As the Aragonese domains expanded to the south, conquering land from Al Andalus, the capital city was moved from Jaca to Huesca in 1096.

The loss of capital status did not mean that Jaca lost other urban functions related to its geographical location.

[8] The plagues and fires of the late Middle Ages plunged Jaca into a deep crisis from which it would not emerge until the intervention of Ferdinand the Catholic to form a local government.

In this regard, Philip II ordered the construction of several fortresses throughout the Pyrenees, including in 1592 the pentagonal Jaca citadel, designed by the Italian engineer Tibúrcio Spannocchi in the fields that had formed the Burgo Nuevo, the neighborhood built outside the city walls.

The development experienced by the city, with the construction of a nationally known ice-skating rink (the Pista de Hielo del Pirineo), a small convention centre (the Palacio de Congresos) and countless second homes, had a profound impact on the economy of the Valley (Valle del Aragon), where many of its inhabitants evolved from small-scale subsistence farmera in Jaca and the surrounding villages to become part of a tertiary economy.