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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.
Wavescan N557, October 27, 2019
The Andorra Radio Wars
From its very inception, radio broadcasting in Andorra was fraught with controversy. The land itself is ruled by two offsite leaders who do not speak the local language (President of France and Bishop of Urgell in Spain); it is a small micro-state with insufficient population to be self-sufficient (78,000); it is sandwiched between two large and powerful European countries (France and Spain) whose internal politics exert a powerful influence upon the local citizens; and it is financially dependent upon foreign income (tourism).
On August 19, 1935, the Andorran Council (their Parliamentary leadership) gave a concession to a local citizen, Bonaventure Vila, to establish a radio station in Andorra. However, he was unable to proceed with the project due to insufficient local funding. Then less than a year later, Vila died, and his married daughter, Dolores Vila Puiggros, inherited the documentary evidence for the project.
One year later again (1937), the husband of Dolores, Stanislas Puiggros, received local Andorran approval to proceed with the radio project, though the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the French government disapproved. In spite of that disapproval, approval for the planned radio station in Andorra was granted in the name of the President of France a year later, in November 1938. Likewise, the Spanish bishop added his approval shortly afterwards.
At this stage, Jacques Tremoulet entered the radio scene in Andorra, and his involvement in the development of international radio broadcasting was inherently controversial. He had already run afoul with government leaderships over his prewar radio schemes in Europe, and he had no more permanent successes after the war, either with his large stations in North Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere.
Radio Andorra was established as an attempt to bypass radio regulations in nearby France that prohibited any private organization from operating a radio broadcasting station. Radio Andorra made its first test broadcast on both mediumwave and shortwave on August 7, 1939, and less than a month later Europe became enflamed with the declarations of war that marked the official beginning of World War II.
With now no possibility of supportive advertising, Radio Andorra limped along with occasional broadcasts, neutral in character and consisting mainly of classical music, that were directed to the belligerent army personnel in North Africa, and anyone else who wanted to listen.
Early in World War II, Germany attempted to take over Radio Andorra, but without success. Soon afterwards, England then attempted to take over this influential radio broadcasting station, but they were equally unsuccessful.
After the war was over, it was then that the real radio wars in Andorra began. The French government attempted to take over Radio Andorra, but without success either.
Then, in a continuing attempt to have the station closed, the French government closed the advertising agencies in France that supported the station with advertising revenue. They then blocked all financial banking transactions between France and Andorra.
In 1948, France closed their border with Andorra, thus preventing the shipment of program recordings and radio equipment to Radio Andorra. In addition, a radio station near Bordeaux in France began the broadcast of jamming transmissions against Radio Andorra.
During the following year (1949), Jacques Tremoulet was granted a court injunction, and France was required to end the jamming of the Radio Andorra signal, and also to re-open their mutual border crossings. However, France once again closed their mutual border crossings five years later, in June 1953.
In continuing retaliation, France decided to establish their own radio broadcasting station in Andorra in opposition to the already established Radio Andorra. The new French radio station was initially identified as Andorradio, a name that was very confusing to say the least, when the other station was already identified as Radio Andorra. This French station has been best known under its third consecutive title, Sud Radio.
The first location (1958) for what became Sud Radio turned out to be a miserable failure. The two transmitters (mediumwave and shortwave) were located at Encamp, a valley that is almost completely surrounded by high mountains, and the signal just did not get out.
Six years later (1964), a superpower new transmitter facility was opened at Pic Blanc, near the eastern border with France. They tried to couple two mediumwave transmitters together, 100 kW and 300 kW, but that did not work either.
They also discovered that the minerals in the mountaintop rocks were acting as a reflector, sending the signal wastefully high into the sky. They investigated the possibility of running a long copper cable to a somewhat distant lake and erecting a tower there, but that turned out to be too expensive.
To counter the huge expensive developments that were undertaken by Sud Radio, the already-established Radio Andorra began to implement their own plans for development and modernization. They upgraded the feed line from the mediumwave transmitter in the Castle-like transmitter building to the antenna system at the mountain top lakeside, and they split the feed into the antenna on the edge of the lake.
They received approval to erect new towers and a new antenna system on the other side of the same artificial and sometimes dry lake, with a feed line under the bottom of the lake, but that proved to be too expensive. Eventually both stations were silenced in 1981 by government action, though both attempted a spasmodic though unsuccessful revival. So what happened afterwards?
The studio building for the original Radio Andorra was taken over for government and commercial activity. Their Castle-like transmitter building still contains some of the silenced and dead transmitters. The two towers at the edge of the artificial Lake Engolasters were removed, and a project to construct a tourist hotel there never eventuated.
The Encamp studio buildings for Radio Sud are now in use commercially and for private accommodations. Their transmitter building at Pic Blanc still contains some of their lifeless transmitters, and parties of visiting tourists are regaled with the controversial history of what took place at that location.
For the international radio aficionado, Radio Andorra and Sud Radio remain a fascinating story from an interesting, long ago era of radio history. For the older generation of international radio monitors, the yesteryear QSL cards from Andorra are a valuable and nostalgic reminder of radio events that are these days largely forgotten.