Élysée Palace
The Élysée Palace is the official residence of the President of the French Republic. Completed in 1722, it was built for Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, it was used as the office of the French President for the first time in 1848. The current building contains the presidential office and residency, as well as the meeting place of the Council of Ministers, it is located near the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, the name Élysée deriving from Elysian Fields, the place of the blessed dead in Greek mythology. Important foreign visitors are hosted at a palatial residence; the architect Armand-Claude Molet possessed a property fronting on the road to the village of Roule, west of Paris, backing onto royal property, the Grand Cours through the Champs-Élysées. He sold this in 1718 to Louis Henri de La Tour d'Auvergne, Count of Évreux, with the agreement that Mollet would construct an hôtel particulier for the count, fronted by an entrance court and backed by a garden; the Hôtel d'Évreux was finished and decorated by 1722, though it has undergone many modifications since, it remains a fine example of the French classical style.
At the time of his death in 1753, Évreux was the owner of one of the most admired houses in Paris, it was bought by King Louis XV as a residence for the Marquise de Pompadour, his mistress. Opponents showed their distaste for the regime by hanging signs on the gates that read: "Home of the King's whore". After her death, it reverted to the crown. In 1773, it was purchased by Nicolas Beaujon, banker to the Court and one of the richest men in France, who needed a suitably sumptuous "country house" to house his fabulous collection of great masters paintings. To this end, he hired the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée to make substantial alterations to the buildings. Soon on display there were such well-known masterpieces as Holbein's The Ambassadors, Frans Hals' Bohemian, his architectural alterations and art galleries gave this residence international renown as "one of the premier houses of Paris". The palace and gardens were purchased from Beaujon by Bathilde d'Orléans, Duchess of Bourbon in 1787 for 1,300,000 livres.
It was the Duchess. She built a group of cottages in the gardens which she named the Hameau de Chantilly, after the Hameau at her father-in-law's Château de Chantilly. With the French Revolution, the Duchess fled the Élysée was confiscated, it was leased out. The gardens were used for eating and dancing, under the name Hameau de Chantilly. In 1803, the Élysée was sold to Joachim Murat, in 1808, to the Emperor, it became known as the Élysée-Napoléon. After the Battle of Waterloo, Napoléon returned to the Élysée, signed his abdication there on 22 June 1815, left the Élysée on the 25th. Russian Cossacks camped at the Élysée when they occupied Paris in 1814; the property was returned to its previous owner, the Duchesse de Bourbon, who sold it to her royal cousin, Louis XVIII, in 1816. Under the provisional government of the Second Republic, it took the name of the Élysée National and was designated the official residence of the President of the Republic. In 1853, following his coup d'état that ended the Second Republic, Napoléon III charged the architect Joseph-Eugène Lacroix with renovations.
Since Lacroix completed his work in 1867, the essential look of the Palais de l'Élysée has remained the same. In 1873, during the Third Republic, The Élysée became the official presidential residence. In 1899, Félix Faure became the only French President to die in the palace. In 1917, a chimpanzee escaped from a nearby ménagerie, entered the palace and was said to have tried to haul the wife of President Raymond Poincaré into a tree only to be foiled by Élysée guards. President Paul Deschanel, who resigned in 1920 because of mental illness, was said to have been so impressed by the chimpanzee's feat that, to the alarm of his guests, he took to jumping into trees during state receptions; the Élysée Palace was closed in June 1940, remained empty during World War II. It was reoccupied only in 1946 by Vincent Auriol, President of the provisional government first President of the Fourth Republic from 1947 to 1954. From 1959 to 1969, the Élysée was occupied by Charles de Gaulle, the first President of the Fifth Republic.
De Gaulle did not like its lack of privacy, oversaw the purchase of the luxurious Hôtel de Marigny to lodge foreign state officials in visits to France, saying, "I do not like the idea of meeting kings walking around my corridors in their pyjamas." In the 1970s, President Georges Pompidou had some of the original rooms in the palace redesigned by Pierre Paulin in the modern style, of which only the Salle à Manger Paulin survives. Socialist President François Mitterrand, who governed from 1981 to 1995, is said to have used its private apartments, preferring the privacy of his own home on the more bohemian Left Bank. A discreet flat in the nearby presidential annexe Palais de l'Alma housed his mistress Anne Pingeot, mo
Pope
The pope known as the supreme pontiff, is the Bishop of Rome and ex officio leader of the worldwide Catholic Church. Since 1929, the pope has been head of state of Vatican City, a city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy; the current pope is Francis, elected on 13 March 2013, succeeding Benedict XVI. While his office is called the papacy, the episcopal see and ecclesiastical jurisdiction is called the Holy See, it is the Holy See, the sovereign entity of international law headquartered in the distinctively independent Vatican City State, established by the Lateran Treaty in 1929 between Italy and the Holy See to ensure its temporal and spiritual independence. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome is derived from his role as the apostolic successor to Saint Peter, to whom primacy was conferred by Jesus, giving him the Keys of Heaven and the powers of "binding and loosing", naming him as the "rock" upon which the church would be built; the apostolic see of Rome was founded by Saint Peter and Saint Paul in 1st century, according to Catholic tradition.
The papacy is one of the most enduring institutions in the world and has had a prominent part in world history. In ancient times the popes helped spread Christianity, intervened to find resolutions in various doctrinal disputes. In the Middle Ages, they played a role of secular importance in Western Europe acting as arbitrators between Christian monarchs. In addition to the expansion of the Christian faith and doctrine, the popes are involved in ecumenism and interfaith dialogue, charitable work, the defense of human rights. In some periods of history, the papacy, which had no temporal powers, accrued wide secular powers rivaling those of temporal rulers. However, in recent centuries the temporal authority of the papacy has declined and the office is now exclusively focused on religious matters. By contrast, papal claims of spiritual authority have been firmly expressed over time, culminating in 1870 with the proclamation of the dogma of papal infallibility for rare occasions when the pope speaks ex cathedra—literally "from the chair"—to issue a formal definition of faith or morals.
Still, the Pope is considered one of the world's most powerful people because of his extensive diplomatic and spiritual influence on 1.3 billion Catholics and beyond, as well as the official representative of the Catholic Church being the largest non-government provider of education and health care in the world, with a vast international network of charities. The word pope derives from Greek πάππας meaning "father". In the early centuries of Christianity, this title was applied in the east, to all bishops and other senior clergy, became reserved in the west to the Bishop of Rome, a reservation made official only in the 11th century; the earliest record of the use of this title was in regard to the by deceased Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Heraclas of Alexandria. The earliest recorded use of the title "pope" in English dates to the mid-10th century, when it was used in reference to the 7th century Roman Pope Vitalian in an Old English translation of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum.
The Catholic Church teaches that the pastoral office, the office of shepherding the Church, held by the apostles, as a group or "college" with Saint Peter as their head, is now held by their successors, the bishops, with the bishop of Rome as their head. Thus, is derived another title by which the pope is known, that of "Supreme Pontiff"; the Catholic Church teaches that Jesus appointed Peter as leader of the Church, the Catholic Church's dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium makes a clear distinction between apostles and bishops, presenting the latter as the successors of the former, with the pope as successor of Peter, in that he is head of the bishops as Peter was head of the apostles. Some historians argue against the notion that Peter was the first bishop of Rome, noting that the episcopal see in Rome can be traced back no earlier than the 3rd century; the writings of the Church Father Irenaeus who wrote around AD 180 reflect a belief that Peter "founded and organized" the Church at Rome.
Moreover, Irenaeus was not the first to write of Peter's presence in the early Roman Church. Clement of Rome wrote in a letter to the Corinthians, c. 96, about the persecution of Christians in Rome as the "struggles in our time" and presented to the Corinthians its heroes, "first, the greatest and most just columns", the "good apostles" Peter and Paul. St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote shortly after Clement and in his letter from the city of Smyrna to the Romans he said he would not command them as Peter and Paul did. Given this and other evidence, such as Emperor Constantine's erection of the "Old St. Peter's Basilica" on the location of St. Peter's tomb, as held and given to him by Rome's Christian community, many scholars agree that Peter was martyred in Rome under Nero, although some scholars argue that he may have been martyred in Palestine. First-century Christian communities would have had a group of presbyter-bishops functioning as leaders of their local churches. Episcopacies were established in metropolitan areas.
Antioch may have developed such a structure before Rome. In Rome, there were many who claimed to be the rightful bishop, though again Irenaeus stressed the validity of one line of bishops from the time of St. Peter up to his contemporary Pope Victor I and listed them; some writers claim that the emergence of a single bishop in Rome did not occur until the middle of the 2nd century. In their view, Linus and Clement were prominent presbyter-bishops
Spain
Spain the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula, its territory includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country. Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are part of Spanish territory; the country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar. With an area of 505,990 km2, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the fifth in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Spn or Spania.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi and Vandals. The Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces, into the Kingdom of Toledo, which more or less unified politically and all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was documented as Hispania. In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada; this led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion.
Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs. Until Aragon had been an independent kingdom, which had expanded toward the eastern Mediterranean, incorporating Sicily and Naples, had competed with Genoa and Venice. In the early modern period, Spain became the world's first global empire and the most powerful country in the world, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes more than 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were many advancements in the arts, with world-famous painters such as Diego Velázquez; the most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was published during the Golden Age. Spain hosts the world's third-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state.
It is a major developed country and a high income country, with the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization and many other international organisations. While not an official member, Spain has a "Permanent Invitation" to the G20 summits, participating in every summit, which makes Spain a de facto member of the group; the origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, are uncertain due to inadequate evidence, although it is documented that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians referred to the region as Spania, therefore the most accepted etymology is a Semitic-Phoenician one.
Down the centuries there have been a number of accounts and hypotheses: The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged", it may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean. The word in question means "Hyrax" due to Phoenicians confusing the two animals. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia
Counts of Urgell
This is a list of the counts of Urgell, a county of the Principality of Catalonia in the 10th through 13th centuries. 798-820 Borrell, count of Urgell and Cerdanya 820-824 Aznar I Galíndez, count of Aragon, was given Borrell's counties while he was exiled from Aragon 824-834 Galindo I Aznárez 834-848 Sunifred I 848-870 Solomon 870-897 Wilfred the Hairy, Count of Barcelona, Girona-Osona and Urgell-Cerdanya 898-948 Sunifred II 948-966 Miró de Barcelona, born c. 940 966-30 September 992 Borrell II, count of Barcelona, Osona 992-1 September 1010 Ermengol I el de Còrdova, born 975, killed in battle at Córdoba in 1010 1010–1038 Ermengol II el Peregrí, born 1009, died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 1038 1038–1065 Ermengol III el de Barbastre, born c. 1033, killed at Barbastro in February or March 1065 1065–11 March 1092 Ermengol IV el de Gerp, born c. 1056 1092–1102 Ermengol V el de Mollerussa, born 1078/1079, died in the Battle of Mollerussa 1102–1153/1154 Ermengol VI el de Castella, born 1096 1153/1154-1184 Ermengol VII el de València 1184–1208/1209 Ermengol VIII el de Sant Hilari 1208/1209-1213 Countess Aurembiaix under regency of Peter II of Aragon 1213–1228 Guerau I of Urgell, IV of Cabrera 1228–1231 Countess Aurembiaix, from 1229 with her husband, son of Sancho I of Portugal.
She died in 1231 1231–1236 King James I of Aragon 1236–1243 Ponç I 1243 Ermengol IX 1243–1268 Álvaro el Castellà 1268–1314 Ermengol X 10 November 1314 – 1327 King Alfonso IV of Aragon, died 1366 1327–1347 James I of Urgell, Prince of Aragon, born 1321, poisoned in Barcelona in 1347 1347–1408 Peter II of Urgell, born 1340, died at Balaguer, 1408 1408–31 October 1413 James II of Urgell. When Martin I of Aragon died, James was a candidate to the crown, but the Compromise of Caspe preferred Ferdinand of Antequera. James revolted, on 31 October 1413, surrendered to the king; the county of Urgell was dissolved and count James died in jail in the castle of Xàtiva on 1 June 1433. County of Urgell House of Cabrera
Antoni Martí
Antoni Martí is an Andorran architect and politician, the Prime Minister of Andorra since May 2011, when he was elected on the ticket of the Democrats for Andorra. He was re-elected in the 2015 parliamentary election. Martí was born in Escaldes-Engordany and studied at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Toulouse, part of the Université fédérale de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, he is an architect by profession. Martí was first elected to the General Council in 1993, the first parliamentary election to involve political parties, as a member of the Liberal Union. In the election, the Liberal Union came a close second. Òscar Ribas Reig, appointed Prime Minister, lost a vote of no confidence in 1994, leading to Marc Forné Molné, the leader of the Liberal Union, being appointed as Prime Minister. Martí was re-elected in the 1997 election, in which the Liberal Union won and Molné remained as Prime Minister. Shortly before the 2001 election, the Liberal Union was renamed as the Liberal Party of Andorra, went on to win the election, with Molné retaining his role as Prime Minister.
In 2004, Martí resigned from the General Council and was elected as Mayor of Escaldes-Engordany, the second largest town in Andorra. He served two consecutive terms as Mayor, from 2004 to 2007, from 2008 to 2011; the Liberal Party had contested the 2009 election as part of the Reformist Coalition, losing to the Social Democratic Party led by Jaume Bartumeu. Bartumeu opted to call an early election in 2011 after losing the budget vote two years running to the opposition parties. In February 2011, the Democrats for Andorra was formed as a direct successor to the Reformist Coalition, with Martí as their candidate for Prime Minister, he campaigned against Bartumeu's proposed introduction of an income tax. The Democrats for Andorra won 55.5% of the vote, Bartumeu resigned as Prime Minister on 28 April 2011, to be replaced by Pere López Agràs in an interim capacity until 12 May 2011, when Martí was appointed. In 2011, Martí opened negotiations with the European Union over various aspects of cooperation.
During the negotiations, Andorra changed the foreign investment law, opening the country up to foreign investors, signed an agreement with France and Spain to avoid double taxation. Martí has overseen the introduction of the euro as the official currency of Andorra, following an agreement, completed in June 2011. Andorra was permitted to issue their own euros from July 2013, but due to various delays, Andorran euros did not enter circulation until January 2015. In late May 2013, Martí met with François Hollande, the President of France and a Co-Prince of Andorra, to inform him of his intentions to bring in a law to introduce personal income tax in Andorra. Hollande encouraged Martí to continue with economic reforms. In June 2013, Martí bowed to pressure from the European Union and did introduce a personal income tax for Andorrans; as Prime Minister, Martí oversaw the response to the 2015 Andorran banking crisis, involving American allegations of money laundering made against the Banca Privada d'Andorra.
The government responded to this by the restructuring of the bank, the creation and sale of Vall Banc in place of BPA. In June 2016, Martí praised Michel Camdessus's 2005 report about Andorra, that "turned out to be prophetic." In turn, Camdessus expressed his respect "the government of Andorra for the fact that the Principality embarked on the path of reforms, turning from protectionism and stagnation in the direction of openness and competitiveness." Govern.ad Andorra Government website
Excellency
Excellency is an honorific style given to certain high-level officers of a sovereign state, officials of an international organization, or members of an aristocracy. Once entitled to the title "Excellency", the holder retains the right to that courtesy throughout their lifetime, although in some cases the title is attached to a particular office, is held only for the duration of that office. People addressed as Excellency are heads of state, heads of government, ambassadors, certain ecclesiastics and others holding equivalent rank, it is sometimes misinterpreted as a title of office in itself, but in fact is an honorific that precedes various titles, both in speech and in writing. In reference to such an official, it takes the form Her Excellency; the abbreviation HE is used instead of His/Her Excellency. In most republican nation states, the head of state is formally addressed as Her Excellency. If a republic has a separate head of government, that official is always addressed as Excellency as well.
If the nation is a monarchy, the customs may vary. For example, in the case of Australia, all ambassadors, high commissioners, state governors and the governor-general and their spouses are entitled to the use of Excellency. Governors of colonies in the British Empire were entitled to be addressed as Excellency and this remains the position for the governors of what are now known as British Overseas Territories. In various international organizations, notably the UN and its agencies, Excellency is used as a generic form of address for all republican heads of state and heads of government, it is granted to the organization's head as well, to those chiefs of UN diplomatic missions, such as Resident Coordinators, who are accredited at the Head of State level, or at the lower Head of Government level. In recent years, some international organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, or the European Union, have designated their Permanent Representatives in third countries as Ambassadors, although they do not represent sovereign entities.
This is now accepted, because these Ambassadors rank after the UN representative in the orders of precedence of representatives of international organizations, the UN coming first as pre-eminent, the UN Resident Coordinators are now commonly but informally referred to in diplomatic circles as ambassadors, although the UN itself does not refer to them in this way. Judges of the International Court of Justice are called Your Excellency. In some monarchies the husbands, wives, or children, of a royal prince or princess, who do not possess a princely title themselves, may be entitled to the style. For example, in Spain spouses or children of a born infante or infanta are addressed as Excellency, if not accorded a higher style. Former members of a royal house or family, who did have a royal title but forfeited it, may be awarded the style afterwards. Examples are former husbands or wives of a royal prince or princess, including Alexandra, Countess of Frederiksborg, following her divorce from Prince Joachim of Denmark.
Count Carl Johan Bernadotte of Wisborg, who lost his succession rights to the Swedish throne and discontinued use of his royal titles in 1946 when he married the commoner Elin Kerstin Margaretha Wijkmark, was accorded the style. In some emirates, only the Emir, heir apparent and prime minister are called His Highness, their children are styled with the lower treatment of His/Her Excellency. In Spain members of the high nobility, holding the dignity of grandee, are addressed as The Most Excellent Lord/Lady. In Denmark, some counts those related by blood or marriage to the monarch, who have entered a morganatic marriage or otherwise left the Royal Family have the right to be styled as Your Excellency, e.g. the Counts of Danneskiold-Samsøe, some of the counts of Rosenborg and the Countess of Frederiksborg. Excellency can attach to a prestigious quality, notably in an order of knighthood. For example, in the Empire of Brazil, it was attached to the highest classes, each time called Grand Cross, of all three imperial orders: Imperial Order of Pedro I, Imperial Order of the Southern Cross and Order of the Rose.
In modern days, Knights Collar and Knights Grand Cross of the Spanish Orders of Chivalry, like the Order of Charles III, Order of Isabella the Catholic, Order of Civil Merit, Order of Alfonso X the Wise, Royal Order of Sports Merit, Civil Order of Health, as well as recipients of the Grand Cross of Military and Aeronautical Merit are addressed as such. Furthermore, Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great and the Order of St. Sylvester of the Holy See, Knights of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Knights Grand Cross of several other orders of high prestige, are addressed as Excellency. By a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Ceremonial of 31 December 1930 the Holy See granted bishops of the Roman Catholic Church the title of Most Reverend Excellency. In the years following the First World War, the ambassadorial title of Excellency given to nuncios, had begun to be used by other Catholic bishops; the adjective Most Reverend was intended to distinguish the religious title from that of Excellency given to civil officials.
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Count of Foix
The Count of Foix ruled the independent County of Foix, in what is now southern France, during the Middle Ages. The House of Foix extended its power across the Pyrenees mountain range, moving their court to Pau in Béarn; the last count unified with King Henry IV of France in 1607. 1010-1034: Bernard Roger, count of Couserans, count of Bigorre, lord of Comminges and lord of Foix Main article: House of Albret and Albret In 1607 the county of Foix was reunited to the French crown. Foix Castle of Foix County of Foix List of Co-Princes of Andorra Diana of Foix List of Navarrese monarchs from the House of Foix Navarre monarchs family tree Histoire des Comtes de Foix Medieval History of Navarre
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Andorra portal 
