The Tower-Palace of "La Ballesta" was started to be build around 1083, by order of the monarch Sancho Ramírez to guard the routes of Huesca, Luna and Ejea in that important enclave. In 1102 when his son Pedro I was reigning, Fortún Dat appears as a holder of the property as it is inferred from the transfer document of the town of Bisenque to San Vicente de Roda. The Tower´s possession is held by the descendants of that surname until 1262, year in which the King Jaime I "The Conqueror", creates the barony of Ayerbe for his son Pedro, ceding him the property of La Ballesta.
It was few years in the hands of the Ayerbe family, since the next century Don Lope de Gurrea and Doña Elfa Ortiz were the owners of the Tower as you can read in their will dated in 1347. In that will Doña Elfa´s son, García Ortiz inherites the Tower. Don García Ortiz must have died whithout any male descendants and as the will stated, La Ballesta belongs again to the Gurrea barony, but this time in the part of the Argavieso, as it is recorded in the chartulary of Montearagon of 1392, "...El señor de Argavieso y de Bellestar...".
In 1431 Alfonso V "The Magnanimous" transfers the mere and mixed imprerio and the criminal jurisdiction from Ballestar to Don Juan López de Gurrea. Ballestar was again a property of the main family of the Gurrea. After some years Don Miguel de Gurrea and his son Don Lope get rid of La Ballesta again selling it in 1464 for the quantity of 95.000 "sueldos jaqueses". It was sold to Doña Catalina de Gurrea, Don Juan´s widow, by means of a "carta de gracia" that they reserved to repay for the same price. Ballestar came back to the second family.
Thirty years later, Don Martín de Gurrea repays the selling and he sells it again to Don Gabriel Sánchez, the secretary of Fernando el Católico, who transfers it to his daughter Doña Aldonza Sánchez as a dowry. When she married Miguel de Gurrea y Cerdán, La Ballesta as a trick of fate is in the hands of the Gurrea barony once again. The Tower is inherited by their son Don Francisco de Gurrea Sánchez, the governor of the kingdom of Aragón and Carlos V´s right-hand man. Don Francisco marries Doña Leonor de Castro-Pinós, the daughter of the Ebol viscount. It is at that time when the re-fortress reaches its great splendour because it is Doña Leonor the person who orders to build the present palace carrying out the improvements and the alterations that have remained until our days.
In 1610, Juan Bautista Labaña indicates us that it belonged to Don Miguel de Gurrea -the grandson of Don Francisco de Gurrea sánchez- who died without any descendants. Because of this, Ballestar went to the hands of his brother Don Lope and this way through his descendants in the following marriages among the family members, the rural property passed to belong to the counts of Parcent and Contamina. Don Antonio Ubieto, in his "Fueros y Despoblados" refers to the ballesta in the following terms: "of secular domain (1785) of the count of Parcent". And Madoz, in 1848 tells us: "the Ballesta is a property of the count of Parcent".
