The General Council is the unicameral parliament of Andorra. It is sometimes referred to as the General Council of the Valleys because it was the historical name and to distinguish it from similarly named bodies in the Val d'Aran and in France.
Organization
There are twenty-eight "general councillors", who are elected for four-year terms based on party lists in a closed list system:
two general councillors from each of the seven parishes, elected from the list with most votes in each parish;
The parish lists and the national list are independent of one another: the same person cannot appear on both the national list and on a parish list, and voters cast two separate ballots. This is a recent development; originally, the seven parishes had each returned four deputies. However, as parishes varied in population from 350 to 2,500, this was felt to be significantly imbalanced, and the national list system was introduced for the 1997 elections to counter the disproportionate power held by the smallest parishes. The Council appoints a presiding officer, titled the Síndic general, and a deputy, the subsíndic. The current Síndic general is Vicenç Mateu Zamora of the Democrats for Andorra. The General Council elects the Head of Government, who presides over the Executive Council. The Head of Government appoints the remaining seven members of the Executive Council. The current Head of Government, is Xavier Espot Zamora.
The first parliament in Andorra was established in 1419, as the Consell de la Terra. Councillors were elected by the population, and the council appointed syndics to manage the administration of the principality. It remained in force for several hundred years, slowly becoming the fiefdom of a few major families; this caused popular discontent by the nineteenth century, and major reforms were instituted in 1866. The reforms were masterminded by Guillem d'Areny-Plandolit, and had several effects:
The Consell de la Terra was abolished, and replaced by the Consell General de les Valls, with a syndic and vice-syndic
Regular elections were laid down; in this case, twelve of the twenty-four councillors were to be elected every two years
In the 1930s, matters again began to boil over; one point of particular contention was that the Council had begun regularly referring to Andorra as a republic, which understandably caused some contention with the co-princes. The General Council was dissolved on their order in June 1933, and a special election called to re-elect it. The opportunity was taken to change the voting laws; at this point, all men over twenty-five could vote, and all men over thirty stand for election. In 1970, the vote was extended to women over twenty-five; in 1971 the qualifying age for all electors was lowered to twenty-one, and that of candidates to twenty-five. Women gained the right to run for office in 1973, and in 1978 a referendum was held on the matter of further reform. Later that year, a seventh parish was formed, bringing the numbers of councillors to twenty-eight. In 1982, the Executive Council was created, comprising the Executive Council President and four councillors with ministerial duties. In 1984 Mercè Bonell was the first female Councilor.
