In 1659 France and Spain settled their border in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, and when the details were worked out the next year France was given the villages of the northern Cerdanya, a high valley the new line ran across. Llívia sat among them and stayed Spanish, because it was not a village. It was a town, a vila with a charter, and the treaty had said villages. So it is still there: a Spanish town and its fields entirely surrounded by France, joined to Spain by a road under two kilometres long that stayed a neutral road until both countries joined the Schengen area. Most borders are drawn round what people wanted to keep. This one was drawn round a noun, and the town inside it has spent three and a half centuries being exactly as important as the word said it was.