The history of Andorra

Andorra is a small principality of high valleys in the eastern Pyrenees, wedged between Catalonia and southern France. Its people were farmers and herders under the Romans, the Visigoths and the Franks, and in the Middle Ages the valleys passed to the bishops of Urgell. A treaty of 1278 made the bishop and the Count of Foix joint lords, and that shared lordship, inherited on the French side by the kings and then the presidents of France, has lasted to this day. Poor and isolated for most of its history, Andorra grew rich after the Second World War on tourism, skiing and duty-free trade, adopted its first written constitution in 1993 and has since been drawing closer to Europe.

The first known visitors to the valleys were hunter-gatherers who used the rock shelter of La Balma de la Margineda, near Sant Julià de Lòria, from around 9500 BCE as a seasonal camp on the route across the mountains. Farming arrived in the Neolithic: by the seventh millennium BCE groups were living in the Madriu valley, growing cereals and keeping livestock, and burial sites such as Segudet in Ordino date from the fifth millennium BCE. In the Bronze and Iron Ages small hilltop settlements and sanctuaries appeared, including the engraved rocks of Roc de les Bruixes in Canillo.

Greek historians writing about the Punic Wars mention a people called the Andosini, usually taken to be the inhabitants of these valleys and linked with the Iberian peoples of the southern slopes. Many local place names have roots in pre-Roman languages related to Basque and Iberian. From the second century BCE the valleys fell within the orbit of the Roman Empire, trading wine and grain with the Roman town at what is now La Seu d'Urgell, just to the south.

After Roman rule collapsed in the west, the Pyrenees came under the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo, and Christianity spread into the valleys. When forces of the Umayyad Caliphate overran most of Iberia after 711, the mountains became a frontier. Andorran tradition holds that Charlemagne granted the valleys a charter around 805 as a reward for help against the Muslim armies, though no such document survives and the story is a later legend. What is certain is that the valleys became part of the Spanish March, the frontier counties of the Carolingian Empire, ruled by the counts of Urgell.

The first written record of Andorra is the deed of consecration of the cathedral of La Seu d'Urgell, dated 839, which lists the six parishes that still form the core of the country's administration. In 988 Count Borrell II of Urgell gave the valleys to the bishops of Urgell in exchange for lands in Cerdanya. From then on the bishops were the valleys' feudal lords. To protect themselves from the counts, they placed the valleys under the protection of the lords of Caboet, and a series of marriages carried those rights, through the house of Castellbò, to the counts of Foix north of the mountains in the early thirteenth century.

Rivalry between the Catalan bishop and the Occitan count turned to armed conflict in the thirteenth century, sharpened by the wars against the Cathars that convulsed the county of Foix. In 1278 King Peter III of Aragon brokered a settlement, the first Pareatge, signed by Bishop Pere d'Urtx and Count Roger-Bernard III of Foix. It divided lordship over the valleys equally between the two, who took turns receiving a small tribute, and a second Pareatge in 1288 resolved a quarrel over a castle at Roc d'Enclar and banned new fortifications. The borders and the basic political form of Andorra date from these agreements.

Local self-government grew within this frame. In 1419 the co-lords allowed the heads of households to form the Consell de la Terra, the ancestor of today's General Council, and a court of justice followed in 1433. The economy rested on sheep and cattle, rye, wool and, from the late Middle Ages, small iron forges. Andorra's many small Romanesque churches, such as Sant Joan de Caselles and Santa Coloma, date mostly from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The valleys were briefly seized by the Crown of Aragon in 1396 and again in 1512, during the reign of Ferdinand II of Aragon, but the shared lordship was restored each time.

The rights of the counts of Foix passed by inheritance to the kings of Navarre. When Henry III of Navarre became Henry IV of the Kingdom of France, he decreed in 1607 that the French head of state and the Bishop of Urgell would be Andorra's co-lords. From the late seventeenth century the two began to be described as co-princes.

When Catalonia was stripped of its separate institutions after the War of the Spanish Succession, the bishop persuaded the new Bourbon rulers of Spain that Andorra had always been neutral and distinct from Catalonia, and the valleys kept their customs. Andorran jurists in the eighteenth century compiled the country's privileges and customs in works such as the Manual Digest of 1748. During the French Revolution, France renounced its share of the co-principality as a feudal relic, but Napoleon restored the French co-princeship early in the nineteenth century. During the Napoleonic Wars France annexed Catalonia, and Andorra was briefly attached to a French department before its separate status was restored in 1814.

In 1866 a reform movement led by the syndic Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit won approval for the New Reform, which gave heads of families a vote for the General Council and broke the hold of a small group of leading families. A dispute over a planned casino led to a short revolt in 1880 and 1881, and quarrels between supporters of the bishop, supporters of France and Andorran nationalists, known as the "Andorran question", continued for years.

Andorra remained a poor, remote community of farmers and smugglers until the 1930s, when a hydroelectric plant at Encamp and the first roads brought wages and outsiders. Labour unrest in 1933 led France to send gendarmes into the valleys. In July 1934 a Russian émigré adventurer, Boris Skossyreff, persuaded some councillors to accept him as sovereign, proclaimed himself King Boris I and declared war on the Bishop of Urgell. He was arrested by Spanish police within days and expelled. During the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936, a French detachment was posted in Andorra, and refugees from both sides crossed the passes, many of them staying.

In the Second World War Andorra was neutral. Its mountain paths carried smuggled goods between Vichy France and Francisco Franco's Spain, and escape networks guided Allied airmen, Jews and other refugees south across the frontier. After 1945 the country was transformed. Low taxes and duty-free shopping drew visitors from France and Spain, ski resorts opened, banks multiplied, and the population grew rapidly with immigrants, mostly from Spain and Portugal. The French co-prince Charles de Gaulle visited in 1967. Women gained the vote in 1970, and in 1982 the General Council chose an executive council under Òscar Ribas Reig, the first government separate from the parliament.

Andorra's first written constitution was approved by referendum on 14 March 1993, with about 74 per cent in favour. It placed sovereignty with the Andorran people, kept the two co-princes as joint heads of state with largely ceremonial powers, legalised political parties and created an independent judiciary. France and Spain recognised Andorra's sovereignty by treaty, and it joined the United Nations on 28 July 1993 and the Council of Europe in 1994. A customs union with the European Community had come into force in 1991, and a monetary agreement signed in 2011 made the euro the official currency.

Under pressure from France and international bodies, Andorra gradually dismantled its banking secrecy and its status as a tax haven in the 2000s and 2010s, introducing income taxes and agreeing to exchange tax information. In 2004 the Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley was listed by UNESCO for its traditions of pastoralism, shared land use and ironworking, and in 2020 Andorra joined the International Monetary Fund. Xavier Espot of the Democrats for Andorra has been head of government since 2019 and won a renewed majority in 2023. Emmanuel Macron has been the French co-prince since 2017, and Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat became the episcopal co-prince in May 2025. On 19 October 2026 the European Commission signed an association agreement with Andorra and San Marino giving them access to the EU's internal market, which still needed the consent of the European Parliament. Andorra's relations with its two neighbours, France and Spain, remain the foundation of its existence.