These Catalans Already Stand Apart
LLIVIA, Spain — The Spanish police tried to halt an independence referendum in Catalonia on October 1 by firing rubber bullets and barring polling stations.
But in little Llivia, the small cobblestone square in the town center was packed with a celebratory crowd. Rosario Cortizo, 67, who runs a restaurant and hostel with her husband, even organized a barbecue for the voters.
“We have been waiting for this day for a very long time,” Ms. Cortizo said joyfully.
On that day, Catalans were voting on whether or not to remain a part of Spain. But for Llivia, a quaint town tucked about 1,200 meters up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, an important part of that decision was made centuries ago.
Llivia is already separated from Spain physically: The 13-square-kilometer municipality is a geographic anomaly resulting from a quirk of the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees, which settled a more-than-two- decade round of fighting between Spain and France.
Only “villages,” according to the treaty, were to be ceded to the French. Llivia was considered a town, not a village, and so remained part of Spain, and the region of Catalonia.
For more than 350 years, Llivia has remained effectively landlocked as a Spanish enclave inside France.
Today, Llivia is connected to the rest of Spain by the thinnest of filaments, the N-154, a “neutral” road that passes less than three kilometers through France and connects Llivia to the nearest town in Spain, Puigcerda, a couple of hours’ drive from Barcelona.
“The Spanish police were never going to go through France to prevent the people from voting here,” Llivia’s mayor, Elies Nova, said with a smile.
On referendum day, when a mysterious internet shutdown hit the Spanish enclave, Llivia’s mayor used the French internet connection so the vote could proceed, said Laurent Leygue, the mayor of the neighboring French town Estavar. “As a precautionary measure, they even took the ballots from Llivia to France to count the votes,” said Mr. Leygue, who joined the cheerful crowd on referendum day.
Given their unusual position, Llivia’s residents have long maintained a strong sense of independence.
“This can partly be explained by the peculiar history of the town,” said Marc Delcor, 35, the director of the municipal museum.
“The inhabitants needed that sense of belonging, especially after Franco,” he added, referring to the dictator General Francisco Franco, whose death in 1975 opened the way for Spain’s democracy.
Supporters of the separatist movement in Llivia even broke a Guinness World Record by lighting about 82,000 candles in the form of the Estelada, the pro-independence flag, just before the referendum was held.
“It was a beautiful, very unique moment,” Ms. Cortizo said. “The whole village was there to sing ‘Els Segadors,’ the official national anthem of Catalonia.”