In 1905 there was held a great fête at Bourg-Madame and Puigcerda, in celebration of the anniversary of the signing of the Franco-Spanish Convention of 1904, relative to the Trans-Pyrenean railways. It was all very practical and there was very little romance about it though it was a veritable fête day for all the mountaineers.
The mayors from both the French and Spanish sides of the frontier, and the municipal councillors and other prominent persons from Barcelona met at the baths of Escalde, at an altitude of fourteen hundred metres. M. Delcassé, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, described the various stages of Franco-Spanish relations leading up to the convention as to the Trans-Pyrenean railways, which he hoped to see rapidly constructed. He said that while in office he had done all in his power to unite France and Spain. “He drank to his dear friends of Spain, to the noble Spanish nation, to its young sovereign, who had only to show himself to the public to win universal sympathy, to the gracious queen, daughter of a great country, the friend of France, who never tired of formulating good wishes for the prosperity and grandeur of valiant Spain.” After the fêtes on the French side, the party crossed the frontier and continued this international festival at Puigcerda. The fêtes ended long after midnight, after a gala performance at the theatre, at which the Marseillaise and the Spanish national air were enthusiastically cheered.
The French highroad turns northwest at Bourg-Madame, and via Porta and Porté and the Tour de Carol—perhaps a relic of the Moors, but more likely a reminder of Charlemagne, who chased them from these parts—one comes to Hospitalet, from which point one enters Andorra by crossing the main chain of the Pyrenees at the Col de Puymorins.
“A beggarly village,” wrote a traveller of Hospitalet, just previous to the Revolution, “with a shack of an inn that made me almost shrink. Some cutthroat figures were eating black bread, and their faces looked so much like galley-slaves that I thought I heard their chains rattle. I looked at their legs, but found them free.”
There’s good material here for a novel of adventure, or was a hundred years ago, but now the still humble inn of Hospitalet is quiet and peaceful.
The little republic of Andorra, hidden away in the fastnesses of the Pyrenees between France and Spain, its allegiance divided between the Bishop of Urgel in Spain and the French Government, is a relic of mediævalism which will probably never fall before the swift advance of twentieth century ideas of progress. At least it will never be over-run by automobiles.