He was born in Huesca March 24 1157. In the Petronila queen's testament, his mother, calls to him Alfonso and points out that her husband called Ramón to him. The documentation of the time confirms that from his birth was designated indistinctly by the two names: Alfonso and Ramón.
      First-born son of Ramón Berenguer IV the Saint -count of Barcelona and from 1137 prince from Aragon and count of Barcelona- and of Petronila, queen of Aragon, he reigned with Alfonso's name in honor to Alfonso I El Batallador his grandfather's brother. When completing the legal age -seven years- to be able to assume the regal dignity, he receives from his mother -the queen Petronila- in 1164, jointly the Kingdom of Aragon and the County of Barcelona that after the incorporation of the Kingdom of Valencia, and from the last decade of the XIII century, will begin to receive the denomination of Crown of Aragon, although between the XII century and the XIV the most extended expression to refer to the lands and towns of the Aragon Kingdom was that of "Casal d'Aragó".
     He married in Zaragoza with Sancha of Castile and Poland (aunt of Alfonso VIII of Castile) January 18 1174, being 16 years old, to the age that, according to the Canonical Right, a married man reached the age majority. Also, with he was armed gentleman and could act to the front of his Kingdom without the tutorship of the magnates that had exercised from 1162.
     He incorporated to his Kingdom the lands occitanas of Provenza, Rosellón and Pallars Jussà. He signed with his brother-in-law, the Castilian king Alfonso VIII, the treaty of Cazorla in 1179, but years later and by means of the treaty of Huesca (1191), he allied with the kings of León, Portugal and Navarrese against the Castilian hegemony. His son Pedro II happen him in the peninsular possessions. He aided the arts and the norms of the courteous love and himself trained in the poetry, exchanging writings with important minstrels of this time like Giraut of Bornelh.
     Having to choose to be buried in the paternal mausoleum in the Monastery of Ripoll, or to be buried in the married mausoleum of the Monastery of Sigena, he chose the Monastery of Poblet for not to raise suspicions. His testament specifies that, in the event of having conquered Valencia in life, should be buried in Puig (Valencia), place that he had already donated to the monastery of Poblet in February of 1176, a desire expressed also by his son Pedro II of Aragon and also died without completing it.
     Several of the counts of Barcelona from Wifredo el Velloso had been buried in Ripoll, while other they were in another places, among them the monastery of San Pablo del Campo and the cathedrals of Barcelona and Gerona.