Education in Andorra: Three language regimes in a multilingual European microstate

Catalan can be regarded as a minoritized language because it has to share its social and legal space with French and Castilian. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the field of education. This article examines the specific case of the Principality of Andorra: until recently, this cross-border microstate did not have its own national education system and today still lacks a monopoly over public education. Andorran schools – which are multilingual but use Catalan as their main medium of instruction – coexist with French and Spanish schools, but the latter are mainly monolingual respectively in French and Castilian and thus prevent spreading the use of Catalan to the whole population. This is particularly problematic in a context such as that of Andorra, a cross-border microstate with great socio-cultural and linguistic diversity in which nation-building involves precisely making Catalan the common public language of communication.