page_title: Catalan Countries
section_title: Component territories
hierarchical_section_title: Catalan Countries / Component territories
context_page_description: Catalan Countries refers to those territories where the Catalan language, or a variant of it, is spoken. They include the Spanish regions of Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and parts of Aragon and Murcia, as well as the department of Pyrénées-Orientales in France, the Principality of Andorra, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia. In the context of Catalan nationalism, the term is sometimes used in a more restricted way to refer to just Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The Catalan Countries do not correspond to any present or past political or administrative unit, though most of the area belonged to the Crown of Aragon in the Middle Ages. Parts of Valencia and Catalonia are not Catalan-speaking.
  The "Catalan Countries" have been at the centre of both cultural and political projects since the late 19th century. Its mainly cultural dimension became increasingly politically charged by the late 1960s and early 1970s, as Francoism began to die out in Spain, and what had been a cultural term restricted to connoisseurs of Catalan philology became a divisive issue during the Spanish Transition period, most acrimoniously in Valencia during the 1980s.
context_section_description: Catalan and its variants are spoken in:
  the Spanish Autonomous Communities of
  Catalonia – even though in the comarca of Val d'Aran, Occitan is considered the language proper to that territory;
  Aragon, in a Catalan-speaking area known as "La Franja de Ponent" ("Western Strip");
  the Balearic Islands and
  as Valencian, in the Valencian Community, with the exception of some western and southern territories where Spanish is the only language spoken;
  Carche, small Valencian-speaking area in the Spanish autonomous community of Murcia where some of its 600 inhabitants still speak Valencian due to immigration during the 19th century;
  Andorra, a European sovereign state where Catalan is the national and only official language.
  most of the French department of the Pyrénées-Orientales, also called Le Pays Catalan (The Catalan Country) in French or Catalunya (del) Nord (Northern Catalonia) in Catalan;
  the Italian city of Alghero, in the island of Sardinia, where a variant of Catalan is spoken.
  Catalan is the official language of Andorra, co-official with Spanish and Occitan in Catalonia, co-official with Spanish in the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community—with the denomination of Valencian in the latter—and co-official with Italian in the city of Alghero. It is also part of the recognized minority languages of Italy along with Sardinian, also spoken in Alghero.
  It is not official in Aragon, Murcia or the Pyrénées-Orientales, even though on 10 December 2007 the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognized Catalan, along with French, as a language of the department. In 2009, the Catalan language was declared llengua pròpia (with the Aragonese language) of Aragon.
caption: A mural on Belfast's Falls Road. It reads "Freedom for the Catalan Countries" (in Catalan) and "Freedom for Ireland" (in Irish)
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