Andorra's Place Names Reveal Shift from Arable Fields to Meadows

Historian David Mas, a specialist in vernacular architecture, has described place names such as Prat del Roure, Prada Casadet, and Prat del Rull in Andorra's central valley as examples of "fossil toponymy." These terms preserve evidence of an agricultural landscape that defined the country until the mid-20th century, before urban development reshaped the terrain.

Speaking to the Andorran News Agency (ANA), Mas outlined how Andorra's economy once revolved around two primary land categories: fields close to villages for cereals, legumes, potatoes, or tobacco; and distant meadows in secondary valleys for hay. Known as *prats de dall*, these meadows provided winter feed for livestock, with grass cut by sickle and stored in cabins or threshing areas.

This setup placed arable land near settlements and pastures farther away. Yet 20th-century shifts—mechanisation, the collapse of mule breeding, and the Principality's move to a market economy—reversed it. A pivotal 1940 agreement between Andorran farmers and dairies in La Seu d'Urgell prompted a switch from a few cows for ploughing to herds of about a dozen for milk output. Cereal fields often became grazing areas as a result.

Consequently, current place names in the central valley document this later farming era, not the earliest one, Mas explained. Valley-bottom "meadows" represent a comparatively recent label. This embedded terminology endures alongside urban expansion, where land's worth now stems from property development rather than grass quality.

For those who lived through the transition, Mas noted, the process felt steady but far-reaching, stirring frequent regret over the alteration of terrain essential to national sustenance.