Where time passed by

Which European state declared war on Imperial Germany during World War I (but did not actually take part in the fighting) and remained officially at war until 1957?

Did you guess Andorra, that small landlocked country sandwiched between Spain and France high in the Pyrenees mountains?

I drove here today from Barcelona, before returning for the annual general assembly of the European Evangelical Alliance. Andorra was one of two European countries I had yet to visit-the other being the recently independent Montenegro.

A three-hour drive from the Catalonian coast, past the spectacularly jagged Montserrat with its age-old Benedictine monastery visible from the motorway, brought me through the mountainous Spanish countryside eventually to the Andorran border.

Immediately I found myself entering a long down-town street with sophisticated shop-displays, stretching up the mountain valley for several kilometres. Trusting in my GPS to  lead me to the hotel I had found on the internet the night before, I kept climbing up the valley in a line of traffic of which every second vehicle seemed to be a new SUV.

Despite the crawling traffic, this was obviously not peak tourist season. My stone-and-slate hotel was deserted when I arrived. I had to call the emergency number on the door to summon the hotel owner. He had not received my reservation for some reason and had simply gone home when no guests had turned up. So here I am, sole occupant of a 40-room hotel!

By-passed

For most of its history, time seemed to have by-passed this feudal remnant called the Principality of Andorra. Its name, according to one tradition, derives from an ancient Basque tribe, the Andosinos, who inhabited that region of the Pyrenees thousands of years ago.

The Andorrans may not have engaged with the Germans in the Great War, but their participation in the effort to stop the Moors advancing beyond the Iberian Peninsular earned them a charter from Charlemagne, according to tradition. This tradition also claims that Charlemagne named the principality after the Biblical Endor because of its supposedly similar mountainous character.

Granted self-government in 1278, Andorra was a co-principality nominally ruled by the French President and a Spanish bishop, and remained in a state of neutrality outside the mainstream of European history.

During World War II, Andorra remained neutral. This despite never having withdrawn its declaration of war in 1914 against Germany, having been overlooked by the Treaty of Versailles. The small alpine state, with rugged mountains averaging 2000 metres in height, was an important smuggling route between Vichy France and Spain during hostilities.

Perhaps having been forgotten by time explains why the people of Andorra enjoy the longest life expectancy in the world, second only to Macau: 83 years.

Prosperous

Today however, time has obviously has caught up with the 100,000 inhabitants of a prosperous, modern Andorra which enjoys zero unemployment. Smuggling has given way to tourism and the financial activities of a tax haven. Tourism, especially in the ski season, creates the majority of jobs for the locals.

That, along with modern transportation and communications, has opened the country to the rest of the world. This summer, millions around the world will visit Andorra from their armchairs as the Tour de France pelaton snakes its way through her mountain passes (July 10 and 11).

The ministate's political system was modernized in 1993, when it gained its own constitution, judiciary and foreign policy, and became a member of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Surrounded by the EU, and using the Euro as currency, Andorra has a special relationship with the EU, although is not itself a member state.

Religiously, Andorra still seems stuck in a time warp, compared to European trends. Only marriages pronounced in a church are considered legal. Freedom of religion was made official only in 1993, and the Catholic Church still dominates public life. Evangelicals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Muslims number only in the hundreds.

We can pray that awakening and renewal will penetrate even this mountain enclave, as it opens up to the outside world.

Till next week,

©YWAM Europe - Weekly Words are the personal reflections of Jeff Fountain and do not necessarily express the official position of YWAM.
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