Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales

Prades Prada de Conflent
Jacomet House Jacomet House
Coat of arms of Prades Coat of arms
Prades
Location within Languedoc-Roussillon region Prades
Coordinates:
Country	France
Region	Languedoc-Roussillon-Midi-Pyrénées
Department	Pyrénées-Orientales
Arrondissement	Prades
Canton	Prades
Government
• Mayor (2001–2008)	Jean-François Denis
Area1	10.87 km2 (4.20 sq mi)
Population (2006)2	6,620
• Density	610/km2 (1,600/sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code	66149 / 66500
Elevation	300–745 m (984–2,444 ft) (avg. 357 m or 1,171 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Prades (French pronunciation: ​[pʁad]; Catalan: Prada de Conflent pronounced: [ˈpɾaðə ðə kumˈfɫen]) is a commune and a sub-prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It is the capital of the historical Conflent comarca. Its inhabitants are called Pradéens/Pradéennes in French, and Pradencs/Pradenques in Catalan.

Geography

Prades is located in the canton of Prades and in the arrondissement of Prades, in the Pyrenees Mountains next to the Canigó and Têt River. Its nearby towns include Codalet, Eus, Vinça, Villefranche-de-Conflent

File:Map commune FR insee code 66149.png

Map of Prades and its surrounding communes

Politics and administration

Mayors

Mayor	Term start	Term end
Jean-François Denis	2001	2008
Jean Castex	2008

Twin towns

Prades is twinned with:

• Ripoll, Catalonia, Spain
• Lousã, Portugal
• Kitzingen, Germany

Population and society

Demography

File:Population - Municipality code 66149.svg

Population 1962-2008

Events

The Prades Festival, which specialises in chamber music, was begun in 1950, when eminent musicians were invited to play with Casals to commemorate the bicentenary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. This followed a decade during which Casals had declined to play in public because of events in Spain. From the first festival, recordings of performances at Prades were released on the Columbia record label.

The festival moved to Perpignan in 1951, but returned to Prades to the following year. It was renamed the Pablo Casals Festival in 1982.

Universitat Catalana d'Estiu

Every summer, since 1968, the Universitat Catalana d'Estiu (Catalan Summer University) is held at Prada de Conflent. It is an academic event which usually lasts ten days, open to everybody, where scholars, artists, and other personalities coming from all over the Catalan Countries lecture and discuss about a variety of topics of general interest.

Notable people

• Pierre Nicolas Camille Jacquelin du Val (1828-1862), entomologist born in Prades.
• Thomas Merton (1915–1968), trappist monk born in Prades.

Prades was also the adopted home of cellist Pablo Casals and grammarian Pompeu Fabra during their exile from the Spanish Civil War. A small museum in Prades commemorates Casals.

See also

• Communes of the Pyrénées-Orientales department

References

• INSEE commune file