Andorra Has Two Heads of State: a French President and a Spanish Bishop

Andorra is a 468-square-kilometre patch of the eastern Pyrenees with a population around 80,000. It has two heads of state at the same time. One is the Bishop of Urgell, the Catholic prelate whose seat is in La Seu d'Urgell, just over the border in Spain. The other is the President of the French Republic. They are called the Co-Princes of Andorra, and the office descends in unbroken legal succession from a 13th-century property dispute.

In 1278, the Bishop of Urgell and the Count of Foix had been arguing for years over which one was the rightful lord of the high valleys north of the diocese. King Peter III of Aragon mediated a settlement, signed in Lleida on 8 September of that year. The valleys would have both of them as sovereigns simultaneously: any major decision required the agreement of two princes, one religious and one feudal. The document is called the Paréage of Andorra and is still cited as the foundational text of the Andorran state.

The Foix half of the title moved by inheritance into the kingdom of Navarre. Henry III of Navarre became Henry IV of France in 1589 and folded both titles into the French crown. After the Revolution, the right passed to whichever institution was running France — the Emperor, the king again, then a series of Republics. Today Emmanuel Macron, in his ceremonial capacity as Co-Prince, signs Andorran laws and appoints Andorran judges from the Élysée Palace.

Until 1993 the country still paid an annual tribute under the original terms: roughly 960 francs to France in odd years and 460 pesetas plus six hams, six cheeses, and twelve hens to the bishop in even ones. That year a new Andorran constitution kept the co-princes as ceremonial heads of state, transferred most actual power to an elected parliament, and finally retired the chickens.