Catalonia and Andorra

What is the only country in the world that lists Catalan as its official language? After Athens, we flew to Catalonia, in northeast Spain. Catalonia has wished for independence from Spain for many years. We stayed in a seaside village about 35 minutes northeast of Barcelona called Arenys de Mar. This is the kind of place that few tourists visit and from what we witnessed all the locals know each other, often greeting each other with three kisses on the cheek, alternating sides. The only flags we saw fling were those of Catalonia, never Spain. All the signs and menus are in Catalan, which is close to Spanish. The only difference I could see was that they lost the last vowel, much like the North American version of Italian. Carne Picante, becomes Carn Picant.

We wanted to have a car so that we could visit Andorra, which would be difficult to reach otherwise. Sunday morning, we set out for the three-hour drive on the Catalonian version of the sea-to-sky highway. Andorra is set high in the Pyrenees mountains and we were starting from the coast. About halfway there, I suddenly thought, Do we need our passports? Nick quickly Googled it and yes, sure enough, we did! I’d not thought about it, as I assumed since we were in the EU there would be no border, but it turns out Andorra is not in the EU or the Schengen zone, which allowed free movement. Since we left the passports in the apartment, it was time to improvise the plan so we changed direction and headed to Barcelona.

I had planned to spend the next day in Barcelona and take the train there from Arenys, but since we had the car we had no choice but to pay for expensive parking right at Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia. After marveling at one of the most unique structures in the world we headed toward Los Rambla and ended up inside the Guell mansion, also designed by Gaudi. In the end, the parking wasn’t too bad, probably less than the return train would have been. It wasn’t enough time in Barcelona, but we were happy with what we were able to see.

The next day we returned to the mountains and took a brief stop in Baga and medieval Spanish village near Andorra where I noticed the higher the mountains we got the more Catalunya flags we saw, and even some anti-Spanish graphiti.

When we finally reached Andorra, they never asked to see the passports, but we did visit the capital for lunch and walked around the old town. Andorra feels like a ski resort town, and it is unique compared to its larger neighbours, Spain and France. We did stop at the border control on the way out and asked for the passport to be stamped, which they were happy to do.

PS Andorra is the answer, the only country that lists Catalan as its official language.