Andorra 2014

Yearbook 2014

Andorra. Andorra population in 2020 is estimated at 77,276. Andorra received troublesome attention during the year when it was revealed that former Catalonia regional president Jordi Pujol and his family hid millions of euros in the country from Spanish tax authorities. According to topb2bwebsites, a Spanish judge asked in September for bank accounts in Andorra to be frozen when it was discovered that money had been moved from there to Mexico just days after a son of Pujol was ordered to stand in court.

Andorra is one of the numerous political-economic units born in the Middle Ages within the Pyrenean valleys between France and Spain; it has never left its original geographical framework constituted by the basin of the Valira river, a tributary of the Segre, into which it flows into La Seu d’Urgell in Catalonia.

Since the Carolingian era, this small closed world was relatively populated; some churches dating back to the century are preserved. 10th: Sant Vicenç d’Enclar, Santa Coloma, Sant Romà dels Vilars. They belong to a pre-Romanesque type common to all the Catalan counties and to the ancient Septimania, identified by a single nave of modest size on which a rectangular apse is grafted.

From the century 11th, but especially during the century. 12 °, the Andorra, like all the neighboring Pyrenean valleys, was invested by the ‘first southern Romanesque art’, which brought progress in construction techniques and introduced two innovations: the semicircular apse and above all the slender and pierced bell towers of windows, decorated with hanging arches and pilasters.

The bell tower of Santa Coloma is cylindrical, like that of Sant Vicenç d’Enclar exceptionally unadorned; all the others – Sant Joan de Caselles, Engolasters, Pal, La Cortinada, Sant Julià de Lorià – have a rectangular plan.

This art ignores monumental sculpture, but makes extensive use of artistic techniques related to color: frescoes, altar tables, wooden sculptures, the remains of which are often preserved in foreign public or private collections. In the fresco production there is an evolution from the cycle of Sant Serni de Nagol (second half of the 11th century), still in pre-Romanesque style, up to that coming from the church of Andorra La Vella (second half of the 13th century), marked by a widespread Byzantinism. A master with a sober but very pleasant style, probably trained in La Seu d’Urgell, was a great success locally, as attested by the paintings of Santa Coloma, Engolasters, Les Bons.