Alquézar has about three hundred permanent residents, and the shelter named Arpán E 1 lies only three kilometres from it, up in the dry limestone country on the edge of the Sierra de Guara. These belong to the Levantine art of eastern Spain, protected by UNESCO since 1998, which means small, mostly red figures of hunters and animals, made by people who lived here some six thousand years ago or more.
The valley itself is why you come. The Río Vero cuts a deep, twisting canyon through soft rock between Barbastro and the high Sierra, and the road along it, the A-1232 from Barbastro towards Alquézar and on to Colungo, is an honest motorcycle road: some tight bends, a couple of blind crests, a patchy surface in places, and between the bends views of cliffs, oak scrub and cypress-like junipers. Traffic is thin on weekdays, heavier at weekends when climbers and canyoners from all over Europe use the Sierra de Guara as a playground.
Alquézar is built on a rock above the river and is wrapped around its collegiate church, which began as a Moorish fortress and was taken by the Aragonese kings in the eleventh century. Wooden walkways in the gorge below let you stand over the water. Vultures circle over the cliffs most days, griffons for certain, and in the right light the stone turns from grey to honey colour at about six in the evening.
Practical matters: Alquézar has bars and a couple of restaurants but it is a village, so go to Barbastro, twenty kilometres away, for fuel. That town is also the capital of the Somontano wine district, where cool nights give crisp whites and a good local red, and its Gothic cathedral is worth a short look. Spring and early autumn are the best seasons, when the heat is mild, the light is clear and the grapevines on the lower slopes are green or gold. The cierzo wind can howl down the valleys in winter, and you will feel it.