Andorra historical timeline

Andorra's history is the story of a valley that two more powerful neighbours agreed to share, and of a people who turned that arrangement into a state. What a visitor sees -- the Romanesque churches, the Casa de la Vall, the parish boundaries -- is the record of seven centuries of careful balance.

Chronology

1. 6640 BC Neolithic people settle the Madriu valley as a permanent camp; the Andosins, an Iberian tribe, hold the valleys in classical times and trade with Roman Urgell.
2. 988 Andorra, believed created by Charlemagne as part of the Marca Hispanica against the Moors, passes from the Count of Urgell to the Bishop of Urgell.
3. 1278 The pareage settles the dispute between the Count of Foix and the Bishop of Urgell by sharing sovereignty over the valleys between them, the charter that forms Andorra as a polity.
4. 1419 The Consell de la Terra, the General Council of the Valleys, is founded, the second-oldest parliament in Europe; the Justice Courts follow in 1433.
5. 1580 The Casa de la Vall is built in Andorra la Vella as a manor and defensive tower; the Consell buys it in 1702 and sits there until 2011.
6. 1607 Henry IV of France, heir to the counts of Foix through Navarre, decrees that the head of the French state and the Bishop of Urgell are co-lords of Andorra, the arrangement that survives as the co-principality.
7. 1814 An imperial decree re-establishes Andorra's independence after the Napoleonic annexation; the 19th century leaves the valleys poor and emigrating.
8. 1933 France occupies the country after unrest around the elections and the FHASA hydroelectric strikes; skiing, shopping and banking begin to build the tourist economy in the late 1930s.
9. 1936 During the Spanish Civil War the inhabitants of Andorra take in refugees from both sides, many of whom settle permanently and contribute to the economic boom that follows. In the Second World War Andorra remains neutral and becomes an important smuggling route between Vichy France and Francoist Spain. Many Andorrans criticised the General Council's passivity over the entry and expulsion of foreigners and refugees, and its sympathy with Francoism. The country came out of the 1940s with a population that had arrived rather than been born there, which is the pattern it has followed ever since.
10. 1970s Public demands for democratic reform lead to the extension of the franchise to women in the 1970s, and to new and more fully autonomous organs of government in the early 1980s. The 1933 revolt had already called for universal suffrage for all Andorrans; it took four decades, and it arrived before the 1993 constitution rather than with it.
11. 1991 A customs union with the European Community takes effect; in 1993 a constitution approved by referendum makes Andorra a parliamentary democracy with reduced co-princely powers, and it joins the United Nations and the Council of Europe.
12. 2004 The Madriu-Perafita-Claror valley becomes the country's first World Heritage Site; the euro becomes official under a monetary agreement in force from 2012; Ordino is named a biosphere reserve in 2020.

What survived, and how

The co-principality survived because neither France nor the bishopric ever thought the valleys worth the trouble of taking outright, and because the Andorrans made themselves useful to both. The Romanesque churches survived because nobody had the money to replace them. The Madriu valley survived unbuilt because it has no road, and the country has now decided it never will.

What did not survive is the poverty: the valleys that exported people for centuries now import most of their workforce.