Stretching 500 km from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, its complex terrain is made up of thousands of valleys and mountains, 214 of which are over 3,000 meters high.
In the heart of the Pyrenees, at the foot of its two highest peaks (Aneto and Posets), lies the Valley of Benasque. This is where Barrabes was born many generations ago.
In the first half of the 20th Century, Barrabes began selling footwear and tools to the villagers, shepherds and smugglers that traded across the mountains between France and Spain, and to the mountaineers and skiers who came to summit the tall peaks.
Times change, and the new generations of the Barrabes family decided to open the largest mountaineering store in Spain in the village of Benasque, home to barely 1,000 residents at that time. Many people called us crazy, but in addition to the mountaineers who visited the valley, we set our sights on something new, something that at the time sounded like magic—the Internet.
In the 1990s, Barrabes had one of the first private Internet connections in Spain, and one of the first online stores in Europe. We were convinced that that magical thing that people had begun to talk about (but that nobody knew) would be the future for someone like us, full of dreams but isolated in the mountains.
Since then, we have never stopped trying to improve, to grow without forgetting our roots, to offer the best of what we know how to do, and to explore new possibilities. In spite of our current reality, with our warehouses that handle thousands of orders every day and with multiple stores around all of Spain, our essence and our heart is still in Benasque, in the Pyrenees Mountains—our paradise.
It’s our home. Because above everything else, we love the mountains, and we belong to them.
