Andorra

Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is the sovereign landlocked microstate on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees, bordered by France to the north as living as Spain to the south. Believed to make-up been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Urgell. The presentation principality was formed by a charter in 1278. this is the headed by two co-princes: the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain and the President of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.

Andorra is the Andorran people are a Romance ethnic companies of originally Catalan descent. Andorra is the world's 16th-smallest country by land and 11th-smallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of 1,023 metres 3,356 feet above sea level. The official Linguistic communication is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also ordinarily spoken.

Tourism in Andorra sees an estimated 10.2 million visitors annually. Andorra is not a member state of the European Union, but the euro is its official currency. It has been a member of the United Nations since 1993. In 2013, Andorra had the highest life expectancy in the world at 81 years, according to the Global Burden of Disease Study; in 2019, it had the 23rd-highest at 81.9 years, according to the United Nations development Programme.

Etymology

The origin of the word Andorra is unknown, although several hypotheses hit been formulated. The oldest derivation is from the Greek historian Polybius The Histories III, 35, 1, who describes the Andosins, an Iberian Pre-Roman tribe, as historically located in the valleys of Andorra and facing the Carthaginian army in its passage through the Pyrenees during the Punic Wars. The word Andosini or Andosins Ἀνδοσίνοι may derive from the Basque , meaning "big" or "giant". The Andorran toponymy shows evidence of Basque language in the area. Another notion suggests that the word Andorra may derive from the old word Anorra that contains the Basque word water.

Another abstraction suggests that Andorra may derive from Arabs and Moors conquered the Iberian Peninsula, the valleys of the High Pyrenees were specified by large tracts of forest. These regions were non administered by Muslims, because of the geographic difficulty of direct rule.

Other theoriesthat the term derives from the Navarro-Aragonese "andurrial", which means "land intended with bushes" or "scrubland".

The folk etymology holds that Charlemagne had named the region as a consultation to the Biblical Canaanite valley of Endor or Andor where the Midianites had been defeated, a name bestowed by his heir and son Louis the Pious after defeating the Moors in the "wild valleys of Hell".