Most People Don’t Even Know It Exists : Tiny Spanish Enclave Juts into France

Crafty diplomacy based on a grammatical nicety has given Spain a foothold in southern France.

Llivia is a fairytale valley high in the Pyrenees mountains surrounded on all sides by French territory, but Spaniards are quick to dispel any suggestions that it is like Gibraltar.

“This is a totally different situation,” Llivia’s mayor Valentin Suria said.

His valley town, which is connected to Spain by an international highway, was given away by France in a treaty of 1659 and although in French eyes it creates an untidy bulge across the frontier it has never been claimed back.

Gibraltar, a rock peninsula about half the size of Llivia on the southern tip of Spain, was captured by the British in 1704 and has been claimed by the Spanish ever since.

“Gibraltar is a political and strategic question. There’s never been any political controversy over Llivia and it is not of any strategic importance,” a Spanish diplomat said.

The diplomat added that most people did not even know of Llivia’s existence, let alone where it was--on the eastern end of the Pyrenees just north of the French frontier town of Bourg-Madame.

The five-square-mile enclave, which has a population of 921, owes its existence to a grammatical nicety.

When 33 villages in the surrounding Cerdana region were handed over to France in accordance with terms of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, Spanish negotiator Count Fuenzaldana successfully argued that Llivia was in fact a small town and not a village.

The territory has remained defiantly Spanish ever since.

“No one is interested in changing things” the mayor said.

Border Crossers

The people of Llivia, a town of stone houses with a medieval church and ruined castle perched at the head of the valley, and two tiny outlying hamlets, make their living mainly from farming. There is no unemployment, the mayor said.

Many of the inhabitants cross the borders every day to work in France or Spain. There is one small Spanish customs post. The French have given up stationing a permanent frontier guard.

The town of Llivia itself lies about four miles inside French territory. About 3,000 tourists visit the town each week, travelers curious to observe this Spanish outpost where the sole language is Catalan.

One of Llivia’s main attractions is what purports to be the remains of Europe’s oldest pharmacy, an array of pharmaceutical jars laid out in the town’s museum from an original pharmacist’s shop founded in 1415.

A visitors book records a list of the distinguished people who have come to Llivia, among them the late West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

The Treaty of the Pyrenees, which followed Spain’s crushing defeat at the battle of the Dunes, obliged Spain to surrender large tracts of territory, including Cerdana, parts of Luxembourg and Flanders.

The treaty was signed on an island in the middle of the Bidasoa River at the Irun frontier separating France and Spain on the western edge of the Pyrenees.

The Island of Pheasants, as it is known locally, is also a curious survivor of history.

A mere 475 square yards, half the size of a soccer field and with no inhabitants except migratory birds, it is shared by France and Spain because neither side could agree who owned it.

The island officially changes hands every six months.

“The navies of each country are responsible for its upkeep during their turn which doesn’t involve much more than cutting the grass,” local Spanish official Carlos Rodriguez said.