06/10/2023
The Prime Minister of Andorra has come out as gay in an interview with the small country's news radio network, Ràdio Nacional d'Andorra. Xavier Espot Zamora, who is forty four, leads the tiny nation, which is located in the Pyrannees mountain range between France and Spain. Mr Zamora has been Prime Minister for four years and is a member of the governing centre right Democrats for Andorra Party. LIke other tiny European countries like Luxembourg and San Marino, Andorra's sovereignty dates from the early Middle Ages, in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe. It has a territory of only one hundred and eighty one square miles and a population of around eighty thousand. Andorrans are closely related to Catalan people in Spain, and the unusual constitutional arrangements of the country means that it has two heads of state - the Bishop of Urgell and the current President of France. Its independence from the Crown of the Medieval state of Aragon came in the year 1278. The country has relatively liberal attitudes towards gender and sexual minorities and our monitoring of the services of public broadcaster Radio i Televisio d'Andorra suggests that Mr Zamora's coming out is not a great political issue in the territory and has attracted little attention.
