Hello, bonjour, and hola!
And welcome back to the little Spanish enclave of Llivia.
Or, well, actually,
welcome back to France,
because I’ve just stepped out across the border.
Or have I?
Because this is the neutral road,
and as long as I’m standing on this magic piece of tarmac,
I’m effectively in France and Spain at the same time.
So how exactly does that work?
Why is it here?
And how did it cause a dispute between the two countries
in which the main offensive weapons
looked like this?
This is the story of the neutral road
and the "War Of The Stop Signs"...
This is the D68 road from Llivia to Puigcerda
in the region of Cerdagne.
It’s only about 2km long,
and it is in many ways a perfectly normal quiet French countryside road.
It has French road markings,
and French road signs,
but there is one thing that makes it unlike any other road in France:
the two towns it runs between
are both in Spain.
So here’s where we are on a map.
Right now we’re in a sort of French corridor
between the main Spanish border
and the little Spanish enclave of Llivia.
The D68 is the only direct route connecting Llivia to the rest of Spain.
Now when the road was first built, many centuries ago,
the whole of Cerdagne belonged to Spain,
so that didn’t really matter.
But then in the 1600s
France and Spain had a bit of an argument,
(for 24 years)
and by the time the dust had settled,
the northern part of Cerdagne found itself in France.
Except for the town of Llivia -
which remained Spanish and became a separate enclave.
As you all know, because you saw my video about it.
The thing is, when you create an enclave,
you also create a massive pain in the bottom for everyone living there,
because, among other things,
they now have to go through border checks every time they leave town.
So in order to sort out the mess,
France and Spain drew up the 1660 Treaty of Llivia,
and that said this.
(aside: OK, WHO DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO READ THAT?)
Sorry,
in case you’re not fluent in 17th Century French,
what it’s basically saying is that both countries want their citizens
to be able to continue travelling and trading as before,
and so they’re not going to impose border checks or customs regulations
on anyone using the road between Llivia and Puigcerda.
And if I’m reading this correctly,
they actually go further and say you know what,
this exemption also applies to anyone
travelling between a French village and a Spanish one.
Don’t know why they bothered making any rules tbh.
But that’s how the neutral road was born.
The road now acted like it was in both countries at the same time,
Spanish people were free to use it to cross through France,
and French people were free to follow it into Spain at both ends.
That doesn’t quite mean it actually was in both countries at the same time
– in fact the treaty makes it very clear that if you commit a crime on the road
you’d soon find out which country you were really in –
but for the everyday traveller it was neutral territory.
And later on, the two sides tightened those original rules a bit.
Here’s the 1830 Treaty of Bayonne saying that if you’re Spanish
you’re free to travel between Spain and the enclave
but you have to stay on the road,
and if you’re French,
you’re free to cross over the road
but you can’t use it to go into Spain.
So at this point France put up signs
telling Spanish people that they couldn’t turn off the road,
and French people they couldn’t turn onto it,
and by all accounts these were largely ignored by most of the locals.
But for more than three centuries,
the neutral road was a shining example of international cooperation.
It survived the French revolution,
three Napoleons,
two world wars
and the rise of Franco.
But then…
*** MUSIQUE TRES DRAMATIQUE ***
This is a stop sign.
You probably knew that already,
but it does sometimes surprise people that, say,
Mexico has Spanish stop signs,
and Québec has French ones,
but Spain and France themselves don’t.
And fun fact, that’s because pretty much every country in Europe
agreed to standardise their stop signs in 1968,
as part of a wider effort to simplify road signs
and improve safety for everyone.
And three years later, a couple of stop signs here nearly started a war.
Well, they *called* it a war...
I should be clear, that was a sarcastic nickname,
and given current events in places where I have viewers,
it feels frankly insensitive for me to call something like this a "war"
but for some people around here it was a serious issue.
So what happened?
The neutral road had two crossroads intersections with French roads.
One was a fairly minor junction
but the other was with the N20 highway.
And over the years this had become the much busier road of the two
– not least because it’s one of the main routes
for French holiday-makers heading down to the Costa Del Sol.
From the French point of view,
it made no sense that traffic on the busy road
had to stop and yield to the quiet one.
And so one day in 1971,
they took out the stop signs from the N20,
and put them on the neutral road instead.
That didn’t go down well in Llivia
where some of the locals saw the stop signs as a direct contravention
of their centuries-old rights and freedoms to travel to Spain.
And no sooner had the French installed the signs,
than the people of Llivia removed them.
The French put them back.
The signs disappeared again.
This went on for several years.
And it did escalate -
France ended up posting armed police to the intersection
just to protect the signage.
That’s when local media started calling it the "war of the stop signs".
But eventually the Spanish government got fed up
and in 1983 they stumped up the cash to divert the road.
Ah, I think you can see here where the junction used to be...
These days, this short section of the neutral road is almost totally disused
except by the people living in this house,
and the old crossroads has been completely removed,
along with the level crossing over the Cerdagne railway.
And here’s what Spain built instead:
a shiny new bridge,
a beautiful symbol of international peace
or a symbol of avoiding the problem and hoping it goes away,
either way it seems to have worked.
And meanwhile on their part,
the local French authorities upgdraded the other intersection,
and installed what I will call
the Roundabout Of Reconciliation.
After more than a decade, the conflict was over,
with zero human casualties,
and, if anything, a slightly improved transport infrastructure.
If only more wars could stop like the War Of The Stop Signs stopped.
If you’d like to come here and experience the neutral road for yourself,
well, you really need a time machine,
because to be honest,
the Schengen Agreement has made it almost completely irrelevant.
But this is still a fantastic area for hiking
and if you’re from the railway end of my audience,
the Cerdagne line, better known as the Yellow Train or the Train Jaune,
is not to be missed.
It’s one of the most of beautiful railway journeys in the whole of France.
But that will be for another video some day.
Until then, thank you very much for watching,
stay safe,
and I will see you soon.