The timbers creak beneath your feet.
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Shining and polished as they were during those years when the family lived here and was representative of a whole and very special lifestyle.
Secret passages linking the baron’s rooms with the kitchen, portraits full of history, such as that one, of an enquiring rather eccentric parent, who left a written commission for a portrait of his skull. A portrait that can still be seen hanging on the wall, in a house full of surprising corners, whispered secrets and above all, history.
It’s the Areny i Plandolit house at Ordino.
Culture in Andorra, however, goes much further than museums.
It’s the culture of exhibition rooms and the street. The culture of the various theatre and music programmes, and also activities promoted by cultural organizations.
The 2nd International Female Clowns Festival, a unique initiative in the world, has brought together this year more than a hundred specialists in making you laugh, filling the theatres and the streets of the capital with merriment for several days.
The music loving public was delighted and surprised to enjoy the skill and ability of the pianist who opened the 10th Music and Dance Season in the Commune of Andorra la Vella. The success and high standard year by year have made the Season an essential note in the diary, with excellent performances programmed each year.
Great names such as Jaume Aragall, Barbara Hendricks, Yehudi Menuhin, Narciso Yepes, Jordi Savall, the Orfeó Donostiarra; the Cuban National Ballet and the Cristina Hoyos Ballet; Noa, Sabina, Compay Segundo and Pedro Guerra; Madredeus, Cesaria Evora, Serrat and Llach have entranced the audience in the National Auditorium at Ordino in the musical season organised by the Ministry of Culture. The large number of performances programmed throughout the year makes the audience a privileged public, because the Auditorium, worth a visit for itself, continually offers a varied programme with high standards in all the different styles.
Andorra is a small country, but quite accustomed to welcoming to its halls such distinguished names of the theatre as Josep Maria Pou, and great and successful actors such as Paco Morán and Joan Pera, for the Andorra la Vella and Sant Julià de Lòria joint Theatre Season.
A cool and distant audience, say the artistes, but more and more prepared to be enthused, with proposals from many different organisations, such as concerts of music by Johann Sebastian Bach in Holy Week and the autumn Narciso Yepes Festival in Ordino.
But, going on from the sales, the cheese, the bargains and the clichés, we have a whole country of culture to discover.
Culture which lives in the street. In every concert, every dance, every member of the audience.
We can go to the cinema club every Wednesday, to the theatre, to summer concerts at the Casa de la Vall, summer evenings in Sant Julià de Lòria and rock nights on Thursdays at Poble square, designed to introduce local young musicians in the cool of the evening.
But Andorra also generates its own resources. The Andorran National Chamber Orchestra, directed by Gerard Claret, and the National Choir of Young Singers of Andorra, under the mastery of Catherine Métayer, are, now, two of the finest exponents of classical music in the Principality. You are in for a big surprise if you have not yet heard them.
Literature is also a genre with its own name in the country. Authors such as Albert Salvadó (El mestre de Kheops, Els ulls of Anníbal, El punyal del sarraí), Antoni Morell (Set lletanies de mort, La neu adversa), Joan Peruga (Ultim estiu a Ordino) and Josep Enric Dallerès, with remarkable poetic works, have sent their words far beyond the Pyrenees, and plastic artists such as Judith Gaset Flinch, Alfons Valdés, Francisco Sánchez and Àngel Calvente regularly exhibit at international fairs.
This is the Andorra of exhibitions, concerts and theatre.
All that is needed is for everyone, national or visiting, to let themselves be attracted by the magic of such an offer, where quality is beyond question, and where halls are often not full.