Catalan, a sister language to Latin, has had its times of glory as well as other less fortunate times in keeping with different events in history. This has made it the depositary of a rich and varied culture. The Catalan people are a noble people. They are open, socially advanced, lovers of dialogue, and born of a grand federal and democratic tradition. One need only think of the world´s first parliament which was Catalonia´s. People from the Catalan countries are lovers of peace, respectful of other cultures, and have a documented tradition behind them of 700 years of gender equality and respect for one another – a tradition which continues to this day – a tradition which was probably forged from, amongst many other positive sources, the contact with and influence from our Occitan siblings.

The country where Catalan is still spoken is made up of four states (please see map): Spain where a majority of the population is catalan-speaking, France – a country with a strong centralist and unitarian tradition, Italy where 20,000 catalan-speakers populate today the city of Alguer and Andorra where Catalan is the official language.

In the Principality of Catalonia there is a district called la Vall d´Aran – the Valley of Aran – (called Val d´Aran in Occitan) – where the Aranese tongue – a variation of Occitan – is still spoken, and has been official ever since Catalonia recovered its regional government (the Generalitat – the Catalan legislative assembly.

Catalan, is spoken basically in the following four autonomous communities within the Spanish state: Principality (Catalonia), Valencian Country, the Balearic Islands and Aragon (Ponent Strip).

We must take into account that one of the main elements of the cultural diversity of the Spanish State is its linguistic variety. In addition to Castilian Spanish, one can hear Basque, Galician Spanish, Catalan and other minority languages. A part of the peninsula uses Catalan to communicate in, as well as the different areas that can be observed in the map. Due to the extensiveness of the Catalan-speaking territory, different varieties in lexicon as well as in pronunciation can be found, not unlike what can be observed in other places in the world. This great heterogeneity, which we´d like to introduce visitors to this web site to, can aid in the enrichment of this language, and in the creation of a bond between speakers of Catalan.