Another Berlin

WAR NARROWLY AVOIDED, screamed a French newspaper last week. Where? In a landlocked, feudal principality that has no airport, railroad, currency, income tax or national debt--and has only seven men under arms.

Perched in the Pyrenees between Spain and France. Andorra is a tiny (191 sq. mi.), tetchy nation of shepherds and smugglers that dates its sovereignty to Charlemagne--a fact that none of Andorra's 8,000 citizens ever seem to forget.

Since 1278, Andorra has been jointly ruled by two princes, Spain's Bishop of Urgel--known as "the Mitre"--and the King of France, who nowadays is Charles de Gaulle. Each of the princes is represented in Andorra by an official known as a veguer.

Though the offices of the two veguers are only six feet apart, they conduct all their business in writing, which tends to slow Andorra's reaction time. It took 44 years to rescind its World War I declaration of war against Germany. Last week the tempo in Andorra was picking up as signs splashed on walls in the capital city of Andorra la Vella proclaimed: "Liberty or Death!" Doorless Key. Reason for the crisis was a closely guarded state secret. In his office in La Casa de la Vail, a multipurpose structure which serves as Andorra's national assembly, tribunal, jail, banqueting hall, public library, museum, archives, and art gallery and is respectfully known as "The Mother of Parliaments," Andorran Prime Minister Julian Reig was properly cryptic. When pressed to explain the crisis, he replied: "Would you like to see our garrote? Garroting is Andorra's official form of execution. We haven't done it for ages." Outside the Prime Minister's office, a guard in a blue uniform with silver buttons proudly displayed some of Andorra's national treasures, including a 4-lb., 20-in. key. What door does it open? "I don't rightly know," he says. "But it's been around here for a long time, and we always show it to visitors." Vellans & Escaldans. Like the oversized key, Andorra's present crisis has also been around for a long time. The roots of the controversy are in the ancient hostility between Andorra's two major towns, Andorra la Vella and Escaldas. Everyone in Andorra smuggles, but Vellans claim that they are better smugglers than their foes. Vellans sneer that Escaldans are impotent. Escaldans reply that Vellans are "scions of Mephistopheles." Gradually, however, the two towns have grown together physically so that now the town line actually splits some houses down the middle. But Vellans and Escaldans feel no sense of togetherness.

Nine months ago, a group of reformers protested to France's veguer that the Escaldan vice mayor had not been properly elected. By longstanding local custom, elections are never held anyway, but France's veguer suspended the vice mayor. The Mitre refused to acknowledge the sacking, ordered the Spanish veguer to stop signing official documents until the vice mayor got his job back. Government ground to a standstill.

Spain has backed the Mitre by closing its borders to Andorrans and their produce unless they can present the proper export permits -- which the Spanish veguer refuses to sign. Blocked off from their main source of food, Andorrans shiver at the thought of the approaching winter, when for five months snow will make the mountain passes into France all but impenetrable. "Monsieur," mutters the French veguer, "this could be another Berlin."

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