100 Years of Skiing in Andorra

At the centre, a dynamic on-piste scene: a skier carving a left turn toward the right edge of the coin, sending a spray of snow arching upward to the left. The lower legs, skis and right hand with ski pole are just visible. Amid the snowfall, the issuing state 'ANDORRA' is written diagonally, with the year '2024' beneath.

No other European country is as completely shaped by alpine terrain as Andorra. The Pyrenean principality lies at an average altitude of over 1,000 meters, and its highest peaks exceed 2,900 meters — a topography structurally suited to skiing. From at least the early decades of the 20th century, the snow-covered slopes around Ordino and Encamp developed into a magnet for domestic and foreign winter sports enthusiasts alike. The Grandvalira and Vallnord ski resorts are today among the largest on the entire Iberian Peninsula and are of outstanding importance to Andorra's economy — tourism accounts for a substantial share of GDP. Andorra has not only expanded this sector's infrastructure but has also anchored it in sport: the country competes at the Winter Olympics and World Cup races with its own athletes and maintains national federations and support structures that regard skiing as part of state identity.

Organized skiing in Andorra can be traced back to the 1920s, when the first clubs were founded and early competitions were held on local slopes. Development was initially modest — the country was poor, cut off in terms of transport, and dependent on sheep farming and smuggling as its economic base. Only with the onset of tourism in the second half of the 20th century did skiing transform from a local leisure pursuit into a mainstay industry. Today, several million tourists visit Andorra each year, a large proportion of them in winter. The 100th anniversary of organized skiing, celebrated by Andorra in 2024, thus marks not only a milestone in sporting history but also a turning point in the economic and cultural history of this small principality between France and Spain.