Catalonia lies midway between France and Castilian Spain. The region is united by a common language, Catalan. Most people wrongly assume that Catalan is a dialect of Castilian Spanish. Like Spanish and all other Romance languages, it has its roots in Latin, but Spanish and Catalan developed independently of each other.
Today Catalan, alongside Spanish, is the official language of the Països Catalans, which include Catalonia, Andorra, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia (although the debate still rages as to whether the language of the Valencianos is a derivative of Catalan or a separate language). "Unofficial" Catalan-speaking pockets include parts of the region of Aragon, parts of the French Pyrénées, and the town of Alghero on the Italian island of Sardinia (as a result of an invasion by Catalan colonists in 1372). All told, Catalan is spoken by nearly 11 million people, making it the seventh most widely spoken language in Europe, more than both Swedish and Greek.
The restriction and outright prohibition of the language, first at the hands of the conquering Spanish-French forces in the 1714 War of Succession, and later under the iron fist of General Franco, means that language and politics have been inseparable in Catalonia. During the 13th to 15th centuries, Catalan was the lingua franca of the western Mediterranean; after the 18th century it enjoyed a golden period known as the renaixença (renaissance), when all aspects of Catalan culture, but particularly language, literature, and architecture , flourished in a fervor of nationalism. Following the dictatorship, the Catalan language was reinstated as the language of education, bureaucracy, trade, and the media, with an impetus from the autonomous government to impose it as a social language as well -- a plan that didn't go down well with the thousands of Spanish-speaking people residing in Catalonia.
The reality for the visitor today is that both Catalan and Spanish are freely spoken in the city with the vocabulary of the two often mixed together to form a sort of Barcelonese vernacular. The languages are extremely territorial; in El Raval, the neighborhood with the biggest immigrant population, you are more likely to hear Spanish (or Urdu, English, or Arabic), while in L'Eixample you will be greeted with a ¡Bon dia! (as opposed to the Castilian ¡Buenos días!) when you walk into a bar. The Catalan language is also dominant in rural areas. While all Barcelona street names are signposted in Catalan, most people use a mixture of the two languages when actually referring to them, which is the same approach I have used in this book. In museums and galleries, descriptions are in Catalan, with a translation either in Spanish, English, or both. People who understand some Spanish (or French) should not have trouble deciphering them, and those that don't will return home with a few Catalan phrases up their sleeves.
As for the media, English-language newspapers are available in most of the news kiosks along La Rambla. The Spanish edition of the International Herald Tribune contains a section with highlights from El País, the country's major daily newspaper, translated into English. Also be on the lookout for Catalonia Today, a free newspaper covering local and international news. The Catalan-language television stations (TV3 and 33) transmit in a dual, which means that the original language of the show can be heard at the flick of a switch. Oddly, very few hotel TVs are equipped for it.
