2023-09-11 04:19:29
Torcuato Luca de Tena Brunet, author of ‘The Twisted Lines of God’ and director of ABC, wrote in 1948: «The ancient Spanish town of Llivia is an island of forgotten national land beyond the Pyrenees, several kilometers from the Spanish border. It is the northernmost capital of the national regions, one of the most illustrious and oldest. And, unfortunately, one of the most unknown. A lighthouse of Spain in Europe that has survived treaties and conventions hanging from the province of Gerona, like a castaway to the saving branch that never broke off from the national trunk.
It was not the first time that ABC referred to this curious Spanish town that has been located, for 361 years, in the middle of France and completely surrounded by Gallic territories, as if it were Asterix and company. It is what is called an “enclave” and is located five kilometers from Puigcerda, the official border between Spain and France, although it belongs to the province of Gerona. It has remained this way for almost four centuries, resisting hostility from the Government of Paris until very recent times.
‘Llivia, object of discrimination by France’, could be read in our Madrid edition in May 1977, where it was explained that, “once again, the Spanish enclave is once again in the news due to the repeated French attitude of stopping everything that It means development and prosperity for this Spanish community located in the neighboring country. The neighbors have denounced the retention by the French Government of a million dollars that Spain had given to this town to build a level crossing.
Throughout that decade, other similar headlines gave an account of France’s attitude towards Llivia’s neighbors, at a time when free movement in the European Union did not yet exist. It could be said that the Llivienses lived almost enclosed in their small municipality of 12 square kilometers. ‘France deprives Llivia of water’, ‘Paris’s attitude towards Llivia represents a unilateral violation of the 1886 treaty’ or ‘The special regime of economic intervention is finally abolished’ which, “for thirty years, prohibited the residents of Llivia opening a new commercial establishment in their enclave” are just some of the examples.
1,417 neighbors
As a Spanish-sovereign enclave within France, Llivia is surrounded by 45 border markers that only a cartographer could locate today. But, despite everything, they mark the small circular border of this stronghold that, as another ABC special envoy to the municipality explained in 1972, had “a mountain, two rivers, three towns.” [Cereja, Gorguja y la propia Llivia], four bridges, several trails and just over a thousand inhabitants. According to the 2019 census, there are now exactly 1,417 residents, who have the immense pride of having the oldest pharmacy in Europe – recently converted into a Museum –, founded in 1451.
How did Llivia get into this peculiar situation politically and geographically? It happened in 1659, with the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees between Philip IV and Louis XIV, which ended the conflict that began between the two countries a quarter of a century earlier, during the Thirty Years’ War. This agreement affected the border, to the point that Roussillon, Vallespir, Conflent-Capcir and thirty-three places in Sardinia became a French province. In fact, from that moment on, France began to play a leading power role, while Spain deepened the crisis it was already suffering.
The fact that Llivia remained under the sovereignty of Spain “was due to the tenacity with which Miguel de Salvà defended it.” [consejero y diplomático de Felipe IV]during the conversations that were held in Cerdanya to finish defining the distribution of territories between the two monarchies,” according to Joan Capdevila in ‘History of the demarcation of the Spanish-French border’ (National Geographic Information Center, 2009). The Catalan historian also remembers how the Llívia Agreement, which was closed a year later, tried to impose that the municipality could not be fortified. The clause was very poorly received in Madrid and a request was made to Paris for its annulment, which was accepted in mid-April 1661.
Road to Puigcerdá
As the border coincided with the jurisdictional term of the town and it was completely surrounded by French territory, it was agreed to establish a road that would connect the enclave with Puigcerdá, in Spain. Despite this, the existence of this Spanish town in the middle of France went unnoticed by the rest of Spaniards. In 1957, after a trip to the municipality, the writer Luis de Armiñán asked ABC: «Have we Spaniards forgotten our faithful Llivia? Yes, we have somewhat forgotten about it. We have left it a little outside of it and perhaps that is why there are more and more Spaniards. We did not take good care of its roads, we did not give it good light or abundant water. Perhaps the time has come when we pour a splash of the national genre onto her exciting Spanishness, to show them that our love corresponds to theirs. In 1972, another special envoy raised the same question: “Surely there can be found in our country many people of cultivated character, and even skilled in geography, who have never heard of a territory of Spanish sovereignty within the French Republic.” . And in 1981, we continued calling it “a town not well known to the Spanish.”
It was the same inhabitants of Llivia, at the Figueres conferences between 1665 and 1668, in which commissioners from both Crowns met, who requested that their rights over territories that had remained in the French zone be formally recognized. See, for example, the canal, the Carlit mountain, the Belloch hermitage and the usufruct of the Bolquera forest. As expected, they received no response or insistence from Madrid. .
In 1732 the plots of Llivia were finally delimited. Until then, the limits that marked this small Spanish enclave had not been clearly defined, so that the French owners whose lands were within the term were not considered for tax purposes by Spain. These new boundaries were based on ancient boundary markers and medieval descriptions of town territories. Many cairns, however, were joined by straight lines, which included several French estates and ended up provoking their protests.
French sovereignty
At the end of the 18th century, rumors reached Llivia that the sovereignty of its municipality could be ceded to France. It did not sit well with the neighbors and they reacted quickly by sending a letter to Floridablanca, secretary of the Spanish Office of State, in which they argued their Spanishness. It had its effect, the Government put pressure on it from Madrid and the process was stopped. They had the problem in 1857, which caused Fernando del Pino, deputy for Puigcerdá, to write alarmed to the Spanish president. A few days later he received the response, which denied the rumors and, for his peace of mind, informed him that his intention was to look after the interests of all the inhabitants, wherever they were.
«We can see that both the possibility of being incorporated into France and the pressure exerted by their neighbors have always alerted those from Llívia. During the French cordon sanitaire of 1821, they complained that the French had taken the opportunity to move boundary markers and usurp lands,” says Capdevila in his book. Another example of these pressures was the case of the road that the French wanted to open through the municipality of Llivia, with the aim of connecting the Querol valley with the region of Coll de la Perxa. To stop this work, which was already carrying out the necessary clearing in the interior of the Spanish term, the locals had to use force.
In the other treaty signed between the two countries in 1866, article 21 guaranteed the free passage of the French through Llivia, and of the Spanish between Llivia and Spanish territory, through the neutral road that linked them with Puigcerdá. Article 24, for its part, gave the Spaniards freedom of passage along some roads to go cut firewood at the Bac de la Bolquera. And other points added new permits, although France continued to deny the fortification of the municipality.
Alfonso XIII
It was in 1910 when the enclave was mentioned for the first time in this newspaper, in a short review where it was reported that Dolores Venera had been authorized to use in Spain the title of Countess of Llivia granted by the Pope. And it was not mentioned again until 1924, on the occasion of the visit of King Alfonso XIII to inspect precisely “the works of the international highway” that linked him with Spain.
Since then Llivia’s status has never changed. It remains a Spanish municipality within France. If one wants to visit it, one must necessarily pass through French territory. This is what happened to Franco himself on February 11, 1939, two months before he won the Civil War. He had to ask permission from Prime Minister Albert Lebrun, of the Radical Republican Party, to occupy it, since he had to access the neighboring country to do so. He gave it to them and the national soldiers found no resistance inside.
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