A UNIQUE REPUBLIC, WHERE SMUGGLING 



IS AN INDUSTRY 



By Herbert Corey 



Author of "On the Monastir Road/' "Shopping Abroad for Our Army 



in France/' etc. 



IT WAS quite by accident that I found 

 Llivia. I had started out on a hunt 

 for Andorra, that joyous little repub- 

 lic on the crest of the Pyrenees which is 

 trying to live up to its medieval tradi- 

 tions by making an honest living as a 

 smuggler during the world war. It is not 

 every day that one finds a cheerfully out- 

 law State in the midst of moderately inno- 

 cent outlawry. In Barcelona stories were 

 told of the flagrantly public leave-taking 

 of the mule smugglers from the great 

 square of Vieille Andorra, and of the nar- 

 row paths by which the contrabandists 

 who specialized in tobacco made their 

 way into France. A visit to Andorra 

 seemed imperative. 



I had never heard of Llivia. Not one 

 guide-book in three mentions it. Those 

 that do give it a slighting four-line para- 

 graph as "a Spanish village in France," 

 and further impair a reputation that has 

 been blown upon for centuries by alleging 

 that the principal trade is in articles of 

 contraband. Its stern old church and the 

 lowering little fortresses the Llivians be- 

 lieve are homes, and the narrow, winding 

 alleys in which mounted men were once 

 helpless against cross-bows do not attract 

 tourists. 



Tiny electric lights now make the 

 Llivian night visible, and there is a tele- 

 phone in the Bureau of the Guardia 

 Civile, at the corner of the Plaza de la 

 Constitucion. But these modernities do 

 not impair Llivia's status. Even its en- 

 mities are of the seventeenth century. 

 Its people do not permit themselves to 

 forget that they are Spanish people in a 

 Spanish town set down by the accident 

 of an old war in the land of France. One 

 reaches them by a neutral road. 



Because the Andorran smugglers fur- 

 nish the reason for this narrative and 

 Llivia is but the incidental decoration, 



the story of Andorra should be told first. 

 But I find it difficult to keep away from 

 Llivia. There is something exquisitely 

 anachronistic in this little town — it has 

 but 600 people in all — whose men work 

 in the fields by day and run loads of con- 

 traband into France by night. The hand 

 of every officer of the law is against 

 them. The neutral road by which one 

 reaches Llivia from Spain is guarded by 

 two posts of French and one of Spanish 

 soldiers. 



visitors regarded with justifiable 

 suspicion 



Strangers who wish to visit Llivia are 

 regarded with a justifiable suspicion. 

 When the carrier's cart in which the 

 Spanish mails are carried jolts down the 

 road, the bell on the neck of the fat old 

 horse jingling merrily, the soldiers look 

 into the cart and poke inquisitive fingers 

 into packages. It seemed to me that the 

 Llivians do not smile as do the cheerful 

 Catalans on the one side or the French 

 people on the other. They 1 regard one 

 dourly from under drawn brows. 



But it is necessary to make a start for 

 Andorra. 



I left Barcelona, then, at six in the 

 morning, the one hour of the day in 

 which sleep seems desirable in this gay 

 city. At 7 o'clock the rag-pickers begin 

 their noisy rounds in the little donkey 

 carts from which the "La Defensa" flag 

 of their union floats defiantly to the 

 breeze. By 9 o'clock the sellers of lottery 

 tickets are in full cry. At 10 o'clock the 

 ramblas are full of people, who gossip as 

 they walk between the bird markets on 

 the one hand and the flower stalls on the 

 other. Many pretty girls, clad in the 

 lightly floating costume suited to the 

 Spanish summer, appear by noon, and 

 from 1 o'clock on all Barcelona eats as 



279 



