Third version of the Politar Andorrà found at cal Regí and donated to General Council

In 2008 a book unexpectedly turned up at the head of the house of cal Regí de Prats. Jordi Alcobé acquired it and last March donated it to the General Council. The volume has proved to be a third version of the Politar Andorrà, adding to the canonical edition and the author's working draft already held in the Archive. Francesc Rodríguez will present his study of the find at the General Council on Thursday.

Alcobé had been asked by Peret of cal Regí to take a look at an old book before it was discarded; expecting a breviary or missal, he found instead a copy labelled Manual Digest de les Valls de Andorra. Further examination showed it is not merely a duplicate of the 1764 Manual Digest but a substantially reworked third version of the Politar, revised by Antoni Puig (1721–1805). Rodríguez points to specific textual details—such as a reference to the “santa crosada” in connection with certain indulgences—that appear in Puig’s working draft (acquired in 1975 in Paris and now in the National Archive) but not in the canonical Politar.

The newly recovered volume is an expanded revision rather than a literal copy. It contains differences that include not only a facing map but also illustrations — an image of Santa Maria d’Urgell and one of the Mare de Déu de Meritxell — where the original had only a drawn coat of arms. Puig appears to have attempted to simplify headings and reorder material to make the work easier to read and consult, reflecting the Manual Digest’s declared aim of arming councillors and síndics with arguments to defend “privileges, uses, preeminences and prerogatives.” However, the reordering introduces inconsistencies between the index and the text, which Rodríguez suggests may be lapses attributable to Puig’s advanced age (he was about 76).

Other notable differences reflect the turbulent political context. On the list of co-princes Puig left the French side unchanged as the “gloriously reigning” Louis XVI, despite that king’s execution in January 1793, while he updated the episcopal side with the names of the three bishops—Joaquin de Santyvan, Juan García and Josep de Boltas—who succeeded after the first Politar. Puig also condemns the French Revolution and refers to revolutionaries as “impious,” noting their refusal from 1794 onward to receive the qüestia. Rodríguez argues that the international convulsions of the period, together with a sede vacante after Boltas’s death in 1795, likely prompted Puig to produce a revised Politar.

Rodríguez further suggests the revision may have been encouraged by Puig’s family circle. Puig’s heir was his nephew Macià Puig, then a General Councillor; Pere Casal of cal Regí, who later came to possess the book, was married to a niece of the priest. That family connection plausibly explains how the manuscript came to rest at cal Regí two and a half centuries later. Rodríguez also believes Puig came from a prominent household—probably cal Busquets of Escaldes and likely related to the Busquets who built Casa de la Vall—and argues that if the General Council had commissioned the work they would probably have assigned a scribe, in which case the copy would more likely have entered the Six Keys cabinet (Armari de les Sis Claus).

One remaining question is why Puig labelled his revision Manual Digest when it is effectively a new version of the Politar. Rodríguez offers no definitive answer beyond noting that it is in substance a version of the Manual Digest and that notions of authorship in an 18th‑century clerical context may have differed from modern expectations.