François Taillefer · 1984
F. Taillefer reviews the 1980 first fascicle of Atlas d’Andorra, issued by the Institut d’Estudis Andorrans’ Perpignan centre as the initial installment of a larger atlas project. Its 39 loose-sheet documents include institutional and historical plates, an old map, and land-use mapping of the Ordino valley at 1:20,000. The main content is 26 population plates organized around an overview, the seven parishes, and distributions by age and nationality. Taillefer highlights the Spanish-national majority, its greater predominance among younger residents, and large population differences between parishes. The demographic compilation chiefly uses the “Cens général” of 31 December 1976, derived from municipal and parish registers; a separate graph and table trace population growth. He stresses incomplete, unreliable and sometimes inaccessible sources, missing occupational and residential information, numerical inconsistencies, and a geographical error in the historical plates. Because the sheets are intended for different sections of the definitive atlas, he recommends provisional numbering. He places the project within Andorra’s expressed ambition to become a modern country.
