As a rookie Lion of the Pyrenees, a lion cub rather, the
participation in the event and trip to the Pyrenées will be very important for
me. I know the Pyrenées only from the French side and have visited them for the
first time – oh my Gosh – almost 33 years ago, together with my parents and
sisters. I remember being served Pastis by my father somewhere in the middle of
nowhere and spitting it all over the bus. Later we have visited Andorra – the
little principality located in Southwestern Europe in Eastern Pyrenées. I am
not sure, it might have been the pastis or maybe the tax free metal car toy
which I have received in Andorra la Vella (the Capital of the principality),
but I kept a special relationship with the country ever since.
My last encounter with the Pyrenées was of an academic
nature and precisely with and about Andorra – I have received a scholarship for
young and bright members of a catholic organization to study – You will not
believe it, the political system of Andorra. Yes, I was about to become a
specialist in microstates. Fortunately I was not that young or bright enough or
the pastis served to a minor devastated my brain and I have not succeeded in my
academic career.
But thinking of a topic for this year’s edition of the
LION TIMES, I thought of something connecting me with our destination. And that
is the power of Andorran diplomacy. In diplomacy we try to measure the
efficiency of our work by checking reality against the desired vision of it.
Likewise in business – we try to set our desired vision and understanding on
paper. Assessing it is usually a very depressing exercise in which a random
number generator or a blindfolded monkey
picking a random collection of stocks perform better. But having studied
the history of Andorra, I must say its diplomats have always performed
tremendously well.
Imagine an area of 468 square km – a state the size of
not even Madrid (604 square km) or Warsaw (519 square km) with a population of
77 thousand people. Barcelona being four times smaller (101 square km) has 20
times more inhabitants (1,6 mln). It is officially fully sovereign only since
1993 (it is in 1993 that it became the 184th Member of the United
Nations), but it has kept a de facto independence from its more powerful neighbours for almost
8 centuries.
Why did it matter to me? Coming from a country which
has not been spared by a single tide of history, was at war with practically
every single of its neighbours, went through 300 years of partitioning, 50
years of communism and is back to the Western democratic community for only a quarter
of a century, this peculiarity kept me awake at night for quite some time. This
is what made me study the history of the Principality.
You can of course blame geography, the empty, rocky,
lunar surrounding, the lack of natural resources, or the importance of the
trading platform that the city of Andorra la Vella has always played. There is
truth in all of this. But back in medieval times this was not quite enough to
stop neighbours from invading each other and we all have plenty of examples in
our history textbooks of wars being started out of pure vanity, personal
animosities or pure boredom. And Andorra
was the subject of pressures and attempts to be seized, invaded, controlled
almost constantly throughout the last 10 centuries.
What happened? Here comes the mastery in diplomacy.
Imagine the situation: Andorra claims its creation back to the times of
Charlemagne. They are pretending to be the only survivors of the Marca Hispanica – these were the buffer
states created by Charlemagne to keep the Islamic invasion from advancing into
France. The inhabitants of the Andorran Valley would later receive a Charter
from the king grateful for keeping the Moors at bay already in the 9th
Century. But since 1248 the Principality of Andorra enjoys a double hatted
ruling, shared between the Count of Foix and the catholic Bishop of La Seu
d’Urgell (today’s Catalonia). Both rulers were equal and both agreed to
preserve Andorra’s territory and political form. In return, Andorra payed an
annual tribute called questia. According
to history books they had to pay a contribution of four ham legs, forty
loaves of bread and some wine. And for this tribute Andorra’s borders remained
unchanged since (which equals to 770 years).
Impressive, isn’t? Did it
all happen smoothly? Of course not. There were ups and downs. But each time one
of the co-rulers wanted to raise the tribute or tried to invade the
valley-principality, its diplomats would run to the other co-ruler to complain.
It created a system of perfect checks and balances allowing Andorran to pass
from century to century by bullying one co-ruler against the other. So when the
angry Count would send his army to pillage Andorra la Vella, the Bishop would
immediately send a regiment to counter any attempts to seize control over
co-territory. With this, Andorra never needed to develop its own army. Their
surrounding changed dramatically, power passed from hand to hand, the County of
Foix was absorbed by the Kingdom of France, but Andorra remained.
By the way, even the 1993
constitution was signed by the two co-rulers which were President Francois
Mitterrand of France and Joan Marti Alanis – the Bishop of Urgell. Andorra has become
sovereign parliamentary Principality, but The President of France and the
Bishop remain two official, constitutional Heads of State until today. They are
locally represented by so called Vicars (in the case of France it is always the
Prefect of the French Eastern Pyrenées Department. Also until 1993 Andorra was
represented in its foreign policy by France. But today it has a full-fledged
diplomacy, with a minister. All of that most probably to be able to steer one
co-ruler against the other in case of need… and I am sure they will succeed.
