Andorra: The Day the Prince Came

Charles de Gaulle often acts more princely than presidential, and even his best friends suspect that he sometimes dreams of restoring monarchy to France with himself on the throne. Actually, De Gaulle wears the purple quite legitimately. He is Co-Prince of Andorra, a tiny (190 sq. mi.) principality high in the Pyrenees that has been the joint suzerainty of Spanish bishops and French rulers since the Middle Ages. None of the 46 French kings, emperors and presidents who preceded De Gaulle to the title had ever bothered to make a visit to Andorra. But Prince de Gaulle could not resist the temptation to play the role of feudal sovereign, and last week he went off to examine his fief.

De Gaulle’s visit was staged in his usual royal manner. His advance party of 1,000 gendarmes prowled all over the principality looking for potential troublemakers, and even refused to let Andorra’s 16-man militia fire a welcoming fusillade. The hundreds of stores that have transformed Andorra from a smugglers’ paradise into Europe’s largest duty-free shopping center were shuttered; the Tricolor was hoisted over the village-capital of Andorra la Vella. De Gaulle’s aides reminded anyone who cared to listen that le grand Charles was, after all, the most important visitor to Andorra since his namesake Charlemagne passed through eleven centuries ago on his way back from battling the Moors.

Upsetting the Elders. As usual, the modern-day Charlemagne brought along some controversy in his satchel. The Spaniards, who are the dominant influence in Andorran life, were irked that he had refused to meet his Spanish Co-Prince, the Bishop of Urgel, except at an out-of-the-way church. The bishop remained in Spain. De Gaulle also upset the Andorran elders, who zealously guard their privileges, by urging them to relax the strict rules that deny citizenship to two-thirds of Andorra’s 15,000 residents. And he winced visibly when the Andorrans broke into a game but off-key rendering of La Marseillaise.

When De Gaulle’s black Citroen finally rumbled down the twisting road back to France, Andorrans wondered why their French Co-Prince had decided to come. De Gaulle spoke of building a technical school in Andorra and of connecting the principality by tunnel with France, but those announcements could have been made in Paris. Spanish officials called the visit “more picturesque than political,” but Andorrans did not ponder De Gaulle’s mysterious ways for long. They reopened their shutters and went back to catering to the thousands of lesser Frenchmen who come to Andorra each year to shop for tax-free bargains.