Albert Villaró: Pyrenean Flâneur Blending History, Literature and Rural Life

Albert Villaró embodies the quintessential Pyrenean *flâneur*, seamlessly blending rural life, historical scholarship, and literary creativity in the mountains of Andorra.

Living in Estamariu, Villaró integrates fully into village rhythms. He joins neighbours to repair paths after winter or clear irrigation channels in spring, contributing to the communal solidarity that sustains mountain communities. Despite his reserved, almost phlegmatic demeanour and laconic speech, this involvement aligns with the rugged *orqueria*—a local term for mountain stubbornness—that defines the area.

A trained historian, Villaró has worked as an archivist in La Seu d'Urgell, where he was born, and Andorra la Vella. For years, he led the historical studies department at the former Institut d'Estudis Andorrans, now under Andorra Recerca+Innovació. His research bridges eras: he deciphers medieval diplomas and parchments, while championing prehistoric sites like petroglyphs, dolmens, and the Biscarbó dolmen.

Villaró's novels draw from these worlds. Works such as *Obaga*, *Tercer origen*, *La primera pràctica*, and his latest, *Cadí (una biografia)*, evoke medieval settings and ancient music. Yet he shifts effortlessly to contemporary commentary, delivering wry, ironic columns in *Diari d'Andorra* from Monday to Friday.

Music permeates his life—Bach constantly in his ears, alongside ancient pieces featured in his books. He plays bass in the pop-rock band Nova Companyia Instrumental. In his open-door mountain cabin overlooking the Cadí range, he tends a vegetable garden, chickens, and other animals, bakes wood-oven bread and pizzas rooted in his family's patisserie heritage, and rises before dawn for long walks with his dogs. These solitary rambles, under starlit skies amid awakening birdsong, fuel his writing.

Technology complements his pursuits: apps identify overhead flights from Hamburg, Manchester, or Alicante, and distinguish bird calls like those of the black woodpecker or dipper. With his shaved head and lean frame, he evokes a Pyrenean John Malkovich—a neorural figure at ease with blood, fire, and water, past and present, fiction and reality. Villaró navigates this crossroads fearlessly, connecting Andorra's ancestral traces to the modern world.