We very often receive reservations from people just south of the French border; to anyone else from around the world looking at the atlas this appears to be Spain. But to us living here that area, from the French border down to just beyond the city of Barcelona, is Catalonia. Make no mistake about it.

The Catalan people have their own culture and their own language. Our own region, just twenty minutes from the border of Spain taking in Perpignan, is known as French Catalonia and has a mix of both French and Catalan influence. Our area was actually part of Spain at one stage but is still very much at the heart of Catalan heritige.

As I was saying, we receive a large number of bookings from those south of the border and almost without exception they identify themselves as Catalan, not Spanish.  Maybe this has not made the news internationally as yet but the Catalan people are increasingly campaigning for separating from Spain…being recognised as a nation in their own right. Think what the Basque’s have been doing for a long time. Just lately Catalan extremists have been burning effigies of the Spanish King and Queen in their efforts to distinguish themselves and to protest their constant links with Spanish culture.

This presents a few problems for us. Firstly, when we arrived here in 2004, we made regular trips to places like Figueres and Girona, where Arnold’s Spanish skills worked well to make sure we were understood in the shops etc. Namely, those people there could speak and understand Spanish. About a year ago we noticed a big difference.  When visiting those places recently we have found the people in the shops have refused to speak in Spanish to us, most claiming they do not understand Spanish. Before, road signs etc were both in Catalan and Spanish, now they are just in Catalan. Spanish has fallen by the wayside. Arnold speaks Spanish quite fluently but between here and Barcelona the majority of people claim to ‘no habla espagnol’.

We have problems when Catalan people call to make a booking. They cannot speak French, they cannot speak English and, we have found increasingly lately, that they CAN speak Spanish but REFUSE to. They wish to communicate only  in Catalan. This is fine for them and their cause. But realistically Catalan is not spoken, or taught, outside of Catalonia/Northern Spain. They do not seem to recognise this, or acknowledge it. This where we have problems and these people need to understand that.  In Catalonia it might be fine to only speak Catalan but when you venture outside of it’s borders do not expect your languge to be understood or even accepted anywhere else. Compromise is what is needed.

As the Catalan people push for complete recognition of their language, culture and ‘nation’, I see huge problems for those tourists visiting their region.  The Catalan people need to recognise this. To the world, the Catalan ‘world’ in general is Spain; but to the Catalans it is Catalonia.  The gap needs to be bridged…peacefully and with tolerance.

Above pictured is the Catalan flag.