title: William McKinley

text: In addition to the Canton site, many other memorials honor McKinley. The William McKinley Monument stands in front of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus and a large marble statue of McKinley is situated at his birthplace in Niles. Twenty Ohio schools bear McKinley's name, and several more schools in the United States are named McKinley School. Nearly a million dollars was pledged by contributors or allocated from public funds for the construction of McKinley memorials in the year after his death. McKinley biographer Kevin Phillips suggests that the significant number of major memorials to McKinley in Ohio reflect the expectation among Ohioans in the years after McKinley's death that he would be ranked among the great presidents.


title: William McKinley

text: Statues bearing McKinley's image may be found in more than a dozen states, and his name has been bestowed on streets, civic organizations and libraries. In 1896, a gold prospector gave McKinley's name to Denali, the tallest mountain in North America at . The Alaska Board of Geographic Names reverted the name of the mountain to Denali, its local appellation, in 1975. The Department of the Interior followed suit in August 2015 as a part of a visit to Alaska by President Barack Obama. Similarly, Denali National Park was known as Mount McKinley National Park until December 2, 1980, when it was changed by legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter.


title: William McKinley

text: McKinley's biographer H. Wayne Morgan remarks that McKinley died the most beloved president in history. However, the young, enthusiastic Roosevelt quickly captured public attention after his predecessor's death. The new president made little effort to secure the trade reciprocity that McKinley had intended to negotiate with other nations. Controversy and public interest surrounded Roosevelt throughout the seven and a half years of his presidency as memories of McKinley faded; by 1920, according to Gould, McKinley's administration was deemed no more than "a mediocre prelude to the vigor and energy of Theodore Roosevelt's." Beginning in the 1950s, McKinley received more favorable evaluations; nevertheless, in surveys ranking American presidents, he has generally been placed near the middle, often trailing contemporaries such as Hayes and Cleveland. Morgan suggests that this relatively low ranking is the result of a perception among historians that while many decisions during McKinley's presidency profoundly affected the nation's future, he more followed public opinion than led it, and that McKinley's standing has suffered from altered public expectations of the presidency.


title: William McKinley

text: There has been broad agreement among historians that McKinley's election occurred at a time of a transition between two political eras, dubbed the Third and Fourth Party Systems. Kenneth F. Warren emphasizes the national commitment to a pro-business, industrial, and modernizing program represented by McKinley. Historian Daniel P. Klinghard argued that McKinley's personal control of the 1896 campaign gave him the opportunity to reshape the presidency—rather than simply follow the party platform—by representing himself as the voice of the people. Republican Karl Rove exalted McKinley as the model for a sweeping political realignment behind George W. Bush in the 2000s—a realignment that did not happen. Some political scientists, such as David Mayhew, questioned whether the 1896 election truly represented a realignment, thereby placing in issue whether McKinley deserves credit for it. Historian Michael J. Korzi argued in 2005 that while it is tempting to see McKinley as the key figure in the transition from congressional domination of government to the modern, powerful president, this change was an incremental process through the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: William McKinley

text: Phillips writes that McKinley's low rating is undeserved, and that he should be ranked just after the great presidents such as Washington and Lincoln. He pointed to McKinley's success at building an electoral coalition that kept the Republicans mostly in power for a generation. Phillips believes that part of McKinley's legacy is the men whom he included in his administration who dominated the Republican Party for a quarter century after his death. These officials included Cortelyou, who served in three Cabinet positions under Roosevelt, and Dawes, who became vice president under Coolidge. Other McKinley appointees who later became major figures include Day, whom Roosevelt elevated to the Supreme Court where he remained nearly 20 years, and William Howard Taft, whom McKinley had made Governor-General of the Philippines and who succeeded Roosevelt as president. After the assassination, the present United States Secret Service came into existence when the Congress deemed it necessary that presidential protection be part of its duties.


title: William McKinley

text: A controversial aspect of McKinley's presidency is territorial expansion and the question of imperialism; with the exception of the Philippines, granted independence in 1946, the United States retains the territories taken under McKinley. The territorial expansion of 1898 is often seen by historians as the beginning of American empire. Morgan sees that historical discussion as a subset of the debate over the rise of America as a world power; he expects the debate over McKinley's actions to continue indefinitely without resolution, and notes that however one judges McKinley's actions in American expansion, one of his motivations was to change the lives of Filipinos and Cubans for the better.


title: William McKinley

text: Morgan alludes to the rise of interest in McKinley as part of the debate over the more assertive American foreign policy of recent decades:


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The rainbow flag, also known as the (gay) pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements. The colors reflect the diversity of the LGBT community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender. Using a rainbow flag as a symbol of gay pride began in San Francisco, California, but eventually became common at LGBT rights events worldwide.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Originally devised by artist Gilbert Baker, Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara and other activists, the design underwent several revisions after its debut in 1978, and continues to inspire variations. Although Baker's original rainbow flag had eight colors, from 1979 to the present day the most common variant consists of six stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The flag is typically displayed horizontally, with the red stripe on top, as it would be in a natural rainbow.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: LGBT people and allies currently use rainbow flags and many rainbow-themed items and color schemes as an outward symbol of their identity or support. In addition to the rainbow, many other flags and symbols are used to communicate specific identities within the LGBT community.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Gilbert Baker, born in 1951 and raised in Parsons, Kansas, had served in the US Army between 1970 and 1972. After an honorable discharge, Baker taught himself to sew. In 1974, Baker met Harvey Milk, an influential gay leader, who later challenged Baker to devise a symbol of pride for the gay community. The original gay pride flags flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration on June 25, 1978. Prior to that event, the Pink triangle had been used as a symbol for the LGBT community, despite representing a dark chapter in the history of homosexuality. The Nazi regime had used the pink triangle to identify and stigmatize men interned as homosexuals in the concentration camps. Rather than relying on a Nazi tool of oppression, the community sought a new inspiring symbol.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: A close friend of Baker's, independent filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr., pressed him to create a new symbol at "the dawn of a new gay consciousness and freedom". According to a profile published in the "Bay Area Reporter" in 1985, Baker "chose the rainbow motif because of its associations with the hippie movement of the Sixties but he notes that the use of the design dates all the way back to ancient Egypt." People have speculated that Baker was inspired by the Judy Garland song "Over the Rainbow" (Garland being among the first gay icons), but when asked, Baker said that it was "more about the Rolling Stones and their song 'She's a Rainbow. Baker was likely influenced by the "Flag of the Races" (with five horizontal stripes: red, white, brown, yellow, and black) popular among the World peace and Hippie movement of the 1960s.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The first rainbow flags commissioned by the fledgling pride committee were produced by a team that included artist Lynn Segerblom. Segerblom was then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow; according to her, she created the original dyeing process for the flags. Thirty volunteers hand-dyed and stitched the first two flags for the parade. The original flag design had eight stripes, with a specific meaning assigned to each of the colors:


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The two flags originally created for the 1978 parade were believed lost for over four decades, until a remnant of one was discovered among Baker's belongings in 2020.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: After the assassination of gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk on November 27, 1978, demand for the rainbow flag greatly increased. In response, the Paramount Flag Company began selling a version using stock rainbow fabric with seven stripes: red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet. As Baker ramped up production of his version of the flag, he too dropped the hot pink stripe because fabric in that color was not readily available. San Francisco-based Paramount Flag Co. also began selling a surplus stock of Rainbow Girls flags from its retail store on the southwest corner of Polk and Post, at which Gilbert Baker was an employee.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 1979, the flag was modified again. Aiming to decorate the street lamps along the parade route with hundreds of rainbow banners, Baker decided to split the motif in two with an even number of stripes flanking each lamp pole. To achieve this effect, he dropped the turquoise stripe that had been used in the seven-stripe flag. The result was the six-stripe version of the flag that would become the standard for future production—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 1989, the rainbow flag came to further nationwide attention in the U.S. after John Stout sued his landlords and won when they attempted to prohibit him from displaying the flag from his West Hollywood, California, apartment balcony.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2000, the University of Hawaii at Manoa changed its sports teams' name from "Rainbow Warriors" to "Warriors" and redesigned its logo to eliminate a rainbow from it. Athletic director Hugh Yoshida initially said that the change was to distance the school's athletic program from homosexuality. When this drew criticism, Yoshida then said the change was merely to avoid brand confusion. The school then allowed each team to select its own name, leading to a mix including "Rainbow Warriors", "Warriors", "Rainbows" and "Rainbow Wahine". This decision was reversed in February 2013, by athletic director Ben Jay, dictating that all men's athletic teams be nicknamed "Warriors" and all women's teams "Rainbow Warriors". In May 2013, all teams were once again called "Rainbow Warriors" regardless of sex.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In recognition of the 25th anniversary of the rainbow flag, during gay pride celebrations in June 2003, Gilbert Baker restored the rainbow flag back to its original eight-striped version and advocated that others do the same.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In autumn 2004 several gay businesses in London were ordered by Westminster City Council to remove the rainbow flag from their premises, as its display required planning permission. When one shop applied for permission, the Planning sub-committee refused the application on the chair's casting vote (May 19, 2005), a decision condemned by gay councillors in Westminster and the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In November the council announced a reversal of policy, stating that most shops and bars would be allowed to fly the rainbow flag without planning permission.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In June 2004 LGBT activists sailed to Australia's uninhabited Coral Sea Islands Territory and raised the rainbow flag, proclaiming the territory independent of Australia, calling it the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands in protest to the Australian government's refusal to recognize same-sex marriages. The rainbow flag was the official flag of the claimed kingdom until its dissolution in 2017 following the legalisation of same sex marriage in Australia.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In June 2015, The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan acquired the rainbow flag symbol as part of its design collection.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: On June 26, 2015, the White House was illuminated in the rainbow flag colors to commemorate the legalization of same-sex marriages in all 50 U.S. states, following the "Obergefell v. Hodges" Supreme Court decision.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: An emoji version of the flag ( 🏳🌈 ) was formally proposed in July 2016, and released that November.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Gilbert Baker unveiled his final version of the rainbow flag in early 2017; in response to the election of Donald Trump, Baker added a ninth stripe in lavender (above the hot pink stripe) to represent diversity.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: A portion of one of the original 1978 rainbow flags was donated to the GLBT Historical Society Museum and Archives in San Francisco in April 2021; the section is the only known surviving remnant of the two inaugural eight-color rainbow flags.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Polish nationalists trampled, spat on, and burned the rainbow flag during Independence Day marches in Warsaw in the 2020s. In one case a mob burned down a residential building because it was flying a rainbow flag and had a Women's Strike sign.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The rainbow flag has been repurposed to manifest a multitude of transnational and globalized ways of being queer. In a few scholarly articles, the rainbow flag is described as a "floating signifier". A floating signifier refers to the person giving the object its interpreted meaning and significance. Flags are ambivalent symbols that hold different ideologies, meanings, and agendas depending on the beholder. Therefore, the rainbow flag is a boundary object that not only brings together queer communities locally and transnationally, but can also create debates and conflicts.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In March 2016, rainbow stamps were created by a postal service common to Sweden and Denmark celebrating pride traversing borders internationally. It has become common to display a rainbow in store fronts or on websites to indicate that the space is queer friendly. Many government official buildings in different countries in Europe and America display the rainbow flag.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In some countries, such as Saudi Arabia, it's illegal to sell (or wear) some "rainbow-colored" stuff, since it's claimed to "indirectly promote homosexuality" and claimed to "contradict normal common sense".


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: There have been many activism statements made with using the rainbow colors to create "hidden flags", in order to express their political agenda and support for gay rights and diversity. For example, in Poland on August 6, 2020, President Andrzej Duda was sworn in for a second term supporting an anti-LGBTQ+ campaign and the opposing politicians planned beforehand to coordinate and wear a colored outfit to each represent a color of the rainbow to stand in protest. There is another instance where a group of Latin American activists created a "hidden flag", with their outfits in Russia which bans the rainbow flag.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Concern has been expressed among some of the rainbow symbol being white-washed and regressed to maintain a Eurocentric and colonial influence. A concept called "pride for sale" refers to an overflowing amount of publicity and advertising from big companies displaying the rainbow flag and selling pride merchandise during pride month, but as soon as pride month is over so are all of the promotions. There is also a critique made about how the pride flag has deviated too much from its purpose as a radical symbol for queer rights specifically.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Many variations of the rainbow flag have been used. Some of the more common ones include the Greek letter lambda (lower case) in white in the middle of the flag and a pink triangle or black triangle in the upper left corner. Other colors have been added, such as a black stripe symbolizing those community members lost to AIDS. The rainbow colors have also often been used in gay alterations of national and regional flags, replacing for example the red and white stripes of the flag of the United States. In 2007, the Pride Family Flag was unveiled at the Houston, Texas pride parade.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In the early years of the AIDS pandemic, activists designed a "Victory over AIDS" flag consisting of the standard six-stripe rainbow flag with a black stripe across the bottom. Leonard Matlovich, himself dying of AIDS-related illness, suggested that upon a cure for AIDS being discovered, the black stripes be removed from the flags and burned.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2002, another LGBT activist, Eddie Reynoso recreated Gilbert Baker’s original 1978 tie-dye flag, incorporating a blue canton, with white stars that were painted to a pink color, as residents in states across the nation gained the right to same-gender marriage. The flag- named the Pride Constellation, was first painted on a canvas - as a protest symbol during Nevada’s constitutional amendment to define marriage as that between and man and a women. In 2009, the flag was featured prominently on local and national news outlets as they reported on the California Supreme Court’s ruling- to uphold the state’s marriage equality ban.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Reynoso later rearranged the stars by order of admission into the Union, retaining part of Gilbert Bakers tie-dye flag and the Pride New Glory Flag.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2015, Reynoso’s flag once again made national news after it was featured across various news outlets reporting on the Obergefell v. Hodges oral arguments at the Supreme Court.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: LGBT communities in other countries have adopted the rainbow flag. A South African gay pride flag which is a hybrid of the rainbow flag and the national flag of South Africa was launched in Cape Town in 2010. Flag designer Eugene Brockman said "I truly believe we (the LGBT community) put the dazzle into our rainbow nation and this flag is a symbol of just that."


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In March 2017, Gilbert Baker created a nine-stripe version of his original 1977 flag, with lavender, pink, turquoise and indigo stripes along with the red, orange, yellow, green and violet. According to Baker, the lavender stripe symbolizes diversity.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In June 2017, the city of Philadelphia adopted a revised version of the flag designed by the marketing firm Tierney that adds black and brown stripes to the top of the standard six-color flag, to draw attention to issues of people of color within the LGBT community.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: On February 12, 2018, during the street carnival of São Paulo, thousands of people attended a parade called Love Fest, which celebrated human diversity, sexual and gender equality. A version of the flag, created by Estêvão Romane, co-founder of the festival, was unveiled which presented the original eight stripe flag with a white stripe in the middle, representing all colors (human diversity in terms of religion, gender, sex preferences, ethnicities), and peace and union among all.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In June 2018, designer Daniel Quasar released a redesign incorporating elements from both the Philadelphia flag and trans pride flag to bring focus on inclusion and progress within the community. The flag design spread quickly as the "Progress Pride Flag" on social media, prompting worldwide coverage in news outlets. While retaining the common six-stripe rainbow design as a base, the "Progress" variation adds a chevron along the hoist that features black, brown, light blue, pink, and white stripes to bring those communities (marginalized people of color, trans people, and those living with HIV/AIDS and those who have been lost) to the forefront; "the arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made."


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In July 2018 the Social Justice Pride Flag was released in Chennai, India in the Chennai Queer LitFest inspired by the other variations of the Pride flag around the world. The flag was designed by Chennai-based gay activist Moulee. The design incorporated elements representing Self-Respect Movement, anti-caste movement and leftist ideology in its design. While retaining the original six stripes of the rainbow flag, the Social Justice Pride Flag incorporates black representing the Self-Respect Movement, blue representing Ambedkarite movement and red representing left values.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2018, marchers at the Equality March in Częstochowa carried a modified version of the flag of Poland in rainbow colors. They were reported to prosecutors for desecration of national symbols of Poland, but the prosecutors determined that no crime had been committed.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Also in 2018, Puerto Rican two-spirit designer Julia Feliz designed a variation called the "New Pride Flag." According to Feliz, the flag integrates the historic and modern-day struggles of the LGBT movements with racism, following intersectionality. The design adds the colors of the Trans Pride Flag with brown and black diagonal stripes, emphasizing the importance of trans people of color for the queer rights movement from its inception at the Stonewall riots.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The flag was first released online in the summer of 2018. Feliz's design was used in the Amsterdam chapter of COC Nederland in the Netherlands; at Washington State University Vancouver during the Transgender Day of Remembrance; by the pride parade in Brighton and Hove, UK; and by Tufts University in the 2019 Boston Pride Parade. According to its website, the design can be used for free for non-commercial purposes and for commercial use by individual transgender and queer Black and Indigenous people.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Since 2021, proceeds from the design go to a mutual-aid based US nonprofit aimed at BIPOC transgender and queer people and about spreading awareness on the disproportionate effects of transphobia and homophobia on these people.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK redesigned the "Progress Pride Flag" to incorporate the intersex flag. This design added a yellow triangle with a purple circle in it to the chevron of the Progress Pride flag. It also changed the color of green to a lighter shade without adding new symbolism. Intersex Equality Rights UK posted the new flag on Instagram and Twitter.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The reception to new variations and iterations of the Pride Flag have been mixed. Supporters have praised the focus on inclusion, and the highlighting the role and discrimination of people of color in the LGBT community. At the same time, some have expressed concern that the changes only act as a "performance, creating the impression of inclusion without real commitment", or that they have been "for the sake of branding", while not reflecting any actual "material steps towards real equality". Others have remained critical, arguing that the original design already acts as a symbol of unity, and emphasized that the original flag was designed without any racial dimension in mind. Other critics have called the variations "patronizing" and that they have taken away some "universality". Both the Philadelphia Pride Flag and the Progress Pride Flag were met with some controversy and backlash for these reasons, but also praise and widespread adoption.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: For the 25th anniversary of the June 1969 Stonewall Riots in 1994, flag creator Baker, aka Sister Chanel 2001 of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was commissioned to create the world's largest rainbow flag. The mile-long flag, dubbed "Raise the Rainbow", took months of planning and teams of volunteers to coordinate every aspect. The flag utilized the basic six colors and measured wide. After the march, foot-wide () sections of the flag were given to individual sponsors after the event had ended. Additional large sections of the flag were sent with activists and used in pride parades and LGBT marches worldwide. One large section was later taken to Shanghai Pride in 2014 by a small contingent of San Francisco Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and documented in the film "Stilettos for Shanghai". The "Guinness Book of World Records" confirmed it as the world's largest flag.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In 2003 Baker was again commissioned to produce a giant flag marking the 25th anniversary of the flag itself. Dubbed "25Rainbow Sea to Sea", the project entailed Baker again working with teams of volunteers but this flag utilized the original eight colors and measured across Key West, Florida, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. The flag was again divided afterwards and sections were sent to over a hundred cities worldwide.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The largest rainbow flag in the Southern Hemisphere is a six-stripe one first flown to mark the fourth Nelson Mandela Bay (NMB) Pride in 2014, held in the Eastern Cape province city of South Africa, Port Elizabeth. It measures , and flies on the country's tallest flag pole, which is high, and is in Donkin Reserve, in Port Elizabeth's central business district. NMB Pride had the flag manufactured, in part, as a symbol for LGBT youth to feel empowered even if they were not able to come out. On the decision to fly the flag, a spokesperson for the municipality said, NMB "officially adds its voice to governments committing, firstly, to recognizing the LGBT community, and most importantly, to uphold the rights of the LGBT community". It is regularly flown for NMB Pride as well as March 21 which is Human Rights Day in South Africa, and International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, both commemorating the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: On June 1, 2018, Venice Pride in California flew the world's largest free-flying flag to launch "United We Pride". After its debut for Venice Pride, the flag traveled to San Francisco at the end of the month for SF Pride and the fortieth anniversary of the rainbow flag's adoption. United We Pride then had the flag sent to Paris, London, Berlin, Vancouver, Sydney, Miami, and Tokyo, ending in New York City for Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019. The giant flag was produced by the flag originator Gilbert Baker, and measures .


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: In June 2019, to coincide with the fifty-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, steps at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park were turned into the largest LGBT pride flag. The rainbow-decorated staircase "Ascend With Pride" was installed June 14–30.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: The popularity of the rainbow flag has influenced the creation and adoption of a wide variety of multi-color multi-striped flags used to communicate specific identities within the LGBT community, including the bisexual pride flag, pansexual pride flag, and transgender pride flags.


title: Rainbow flag (LGBT)

text: Spirit Day, an annual LGBT awareness day since 2010, takes its name from the violet stripe representing "spirit" on the rainbow flag. Participants wear purple to show support for LGBT youth who are victims of bullying.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia (; ; Aranese Occitan: "Catalonha" ; ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a "nationality" by its Statute of Autonomy.


title: Catalonia

text: Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, to the south of the Pyrenees mountain range. Catalonia is administratively divided into four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. The capital and largest city, Barcelona is the second-most populated municipality in Spain and the fifth-most populous urban area in the European Union. Current day Catalonia comprises most of the medieval and early modern Principality of Catalonia (with the remainder Roussillon now part of France's Pyrénées-Orientales). It is bordered by France (Occitanie) and Andorra to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the east, and the Spanish autonomous communities of Aragon to the west and Valencia to the south. The official languages are Catalan, Spanish, and the Aranese dialect of Occitan.


title: Catalonia

text: In the late 8th century, various counties across the eastern Pyrenees were established by the Frankish kingdom as a defensive barrier against Muslim invasions. In the 10th century, the County of Barcelona became progressively independent. In 1137, Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were united by marriage under the Crown of Aragon. Within the Crown, the Catalan counties adopted a common polity, the Principality of Catalonia, developing its institutional system, such as Courts, Generalitat and constitutions, becoming the base for the Crown's Mediterranean trade and expansionism. In the later Middle Ages, Catalan literature flourished. In 1469, the king of Aragon and the queen of Castile were married and ruled their realms together, retaining all of their distinct institutions and legislation.


title: Catalonia

text: During the Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659), Catalonia revolted (1640–1652) against a large and burdensome presence of the royal army, being briefly proclaimed a republic under French protection until it was largely reconquered by the Spanish army. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), the northern parts of Catalonia, mostly the Roussillon, were ceded to France. During the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), the Crown of Aragon sided against the Bourbon Philip V of Spain, but the Catalans were defeated with the fall of Barcelona on 11 September 1714. Philip V subsequently imposed a unifying administration across Spain, enacting the Nueva Planta decrees which, like in the other realms of the Crown of Aragon, suppressed the Catalan institutions and rights. As a consequence, Catalan as a language of government and literature was eclipsed by Spanish. Throughout the 18th century, Catalonia experienced economic growth.


title: Catalonia

text: In the 19th century, Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic and Carlist Wars. In the second third of the century, it experienced industrialisation. As wealth from the industrial expansion grew, it saw a cultural renaissance coupled with incipient nationalism while several workers movements appeared. With the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), the Generalitat was restored as a Catalan autonomous government. After the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship enacted repressive measures, abolishing Catalan self-government and banning the official use of the Catalan language. After a period of autarky, from the late 1950s through to the 1970s Catalonia saw rapid economic growth, drawing many workers from across Spain, making Barcelona one of Europe's largest industrial metropolitan areas and turning Catalonia into a major tourist destination. During the Spanish transition to democracy (1975–1982), Catalonia regained self-government and is now one of the most economically dynamic communities in Spain.


title: Catalonia

text: Since the 2010s, there has been growing support for Catalan independence. On 27 October 2017, the Catalan Parliament unilaterally declared independence following a referendum that was deemed unconstitutional by the Spanish state. The Spanish Senate voted in favour of enforcing direct rule by removing the Catalan government and calling a snap regional election. The Spanish Supreme Court imprisoned seven former ministers of the Catalan government on charges of rebellion and misuse of public funds, while several others—including then-President Carles Puigdemont—fled to other European countries. Those in prison were later pardoned by the Spanish government in 2021.


title: Catalonia

text: The name "Catalonia" (; ), spelled "Cathalonia", began to be used for the homeland of the Catalans ("Cathalanenses") in the late 11th century and was probably used before as a territorial reference to the group of counties that comprised part of the March of Gothia and the March of Hispania under the control of the Count of Barcelona and his relatives. The origin of the name "Catalunya" is subject to diverse interpretations because of a lack of evidence.


title: Catalonia

text: One theory suggests that "Catalunya" derives from the name "Gothia" (or "Gauthia") "Launia" ("Land of the Goths"), since the origins of the Catalan counts, lords and people were found in the March of Gothia, known as "Gothia", whence "Gothland" > > > > "Catalonia" theoretically derived. During the Middle Ages, Byzantine chroniclers claimed that "Catalania" derives from the local medley of Goths with Alans, initially constituting a "Goth-Alania".


title: Catalonia

text: In English, "Catalonia" is pronounced . The native name, "Catalunya", is pronounced in Central Catalan, the most widely spoken variety, whose pronunciation is considered standard. The Spanish name is "Cataluña" (), and the Aranese name is "Catalonha" ().


title: Catalonia

text: The first known human settlements in what is now Catalonia were at the beginning of the Middle Paleolithic. The oldest known trace of human occupation is a mandible found in Banyoles, described by some sources as pre-Neanderthal some 200,000 years old; other sources suggest it to be only about one third that old. From the next prehistoric era, the Epipalaeolithic or Mesolithic, important remains survive, the greater part dated between 8000 and 5000 BC, such as those of Sant Gregori (Falset) and el Filador (Margalef de Montsant). The most important sites from these eras, all excavated in the region of Moianès, are the Balma del Gai (Epipaleolithic) and the Balma de l'Espluga (late Epipaleolithic and Early Neolithic).


title: Catalonia

text: The Neolithic era began in Catalonia around 5000 BC, although the population was slower to develop fixed settlements than in other places, thanks to the abundance of woods, which allowed the continuation of a fundamentally hunter-gatherer culture. An example of such settlements would be La Draga at Banyoles, an "early Neolithic village which dates from the end of the 6th millennium BC."


title: Catalonia

text: The Chalcolithic period developed in Catalonia between 2500 and 1800 BC, with the beginning of the construction of copper objects. The Bronze Age occurred between 1800 and 700 BC. There are few remnants of this era, but there were some known settlements in the low Segre zone. The Bronze Age coincided with the arrival of the Indo-Europeans through the Urnfield Culture, whose successive waves of migration began around 1200 BC, and they were responsible for the creation of the first proto-urban settlements. Around the middle of the 7th century BC, the Iron Age arrived in Catalonia.


title: Catalonia

text: In pre-Roman times, the area that is now called Catalonia in the north-east of Iberian Peninsula – like the rest of the Mediterranean side of the peninsula – was populated by the Iberians. The Iberians of this area – the Ilergetes, Indigetes and Lacetani (Cerretains) – also maintained relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean. Some urban agglomerations became relevant, including Ilerda (Lleida) inland, Hibera (perhaps Amposta or Tortosa) or Indika (Ullastret). Coastal trading colonies were established by the ancient Greeks, who settled around the Gulf of Roses, in Emporion (Empúries) and Roses in the 8th century BC. The Carthaginians briefly ruled the territory in the course of the Second Punic War and traded with the surrounding Iberian population.


title: Catalonia

text: After the Carthaginian defeat by the Roman Republic, the north-east of Iberia became the first to come under Roman rule and became part of Hispania, the westernmost part of the Roman Empire. Tarraco (modern Tarragona) was one of the most important Roman cities in Hispania and the capital of the province of Tarraconensis. Other important cities of the Roman period are Ilerda (Lleida), Dertosa (Tortosa), Gerunda (Girona) as well as the ports of Empuriæ (former Emporion) and Barcino (Barcelona). As for the rest of Hispania, Latin law was granted to all cities under the reign of Vespasian (69–79 AD), while Roman citizenship was granted to all free men of the empire by the Edict of Caracalla in 212 AD (Tarraco, the capital, was already a colony of Roman law since 45 BC). It was a rich agricultural province (olive oil, wine, wheat), and the first centuries of the Empire saw the construction of roads (the most important being the Via Augusta, parallel to Mediterranean coastline) and infrastructure like aqueducts.


title: Catalonia

text: Conversion to Christianity, attested in the 3rd century, was completed in urban areas in the 4th century. Although Hispania remained under Roman rule and did not fall under the rule of Vandals, Swabians and Alans in the 5th century, the main cities suffered frequent sacking and some deurbanization.


title: Catalonia

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area was conquered by the Visigoths and was ruled as part of the Visigothic Kingdom for almost two and a half centuries. In 718, it came under Muslim control and became part of Al-Andalus, a province of the Umayyad Caliphate. From the conquest of Roussillon in 760, to the conquest of Barcelona in 801, the Frankish empire took control of the area between Septimania and the Llobregat river from the Muslims and created heavily militarised, self-governing counties. These counties formed part of the historiographically known as the Gothic and Hispanic Marches, a buffer zone in the south of the Frankish empire in the former province of Septimania and in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, to act as a defensive barrier for the Frankish Empire against further Muslim invasions from Al-Andalus.


title: Catalonia

text: These counties came under the rule of the counts of Barcelona, who were Frankish vassals nominated by the emperor of the Franks, to whom they were feudatories (801–988). The earliest known use of the name "Catalonia" for these counties dates to 1117. At the end of the 9th century, the Count of Barcelona Wilfred the Hairy (878–897) made his titles hereditaries and thus founded the dynasty of the House of Barcelona, which ruled Catalonia until 1410.


title: Catalonia

text: In 988 Borrell II, Count of Barcelona, did not recognise the new French king Hugh Capet as his king, evidencing the loss of dependency from Frankish rule and confirming his successors (from Ramon Borrell I onwards) as independent of the Capetian crown whom they regarded as usurpers of the Carolingian Frankish realm. At the beginning of eleventh century the Catalan counties suffered an important process of feudalisation, partially controlled by the efforts of church's sponsored Peace and Truce Assemblies and the negotiation skills of the Count of Barcelona Ramon Berenguer I (1035–1076), which began the codification of feudal law in the written Usages of Barcelona, becoming the basis of the Catalan law. In 1137, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona decided to accept King Ramiro II of Aragon's proposal to marry Queen Petronila, establishing the dynastic union of the County of Barcelona with the Kingdom of Aragon, creating the composite monarchy known as the Crown of Aragon and making the Catalan counties that were united under the County of Barcelona into a principality of the Aragonese Crown.


title: Catalonia

text: In 1258, by means of the Treaty of Corbeil, James I of Aragon King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, king of Mallorca and of Valencia, renounced his family rights and dominions in Occitania and recognised the king of France as heir of the Carolingian Dynasty. The king of France, Louis IX, formally relinquished his claims of feudal lordship over all the Catalan counties, except the County of Foix, despite the opposition of king James. This treaty confirmed, from French point of view, the independence of the Catalan counties established and exercised during the previous three centuries, but also meant the irremediable separation between the geographical areas of Catalonia and Languedoc.


title: Catalonia

text: As a coastal territory, Catalonia became the base of the Aragonese Crown's maritime forces, which spread the power of the Crown in the Mediterranean, turning Barcelona into a powerful and wealthy city. In the period of 1164–1410, new territories, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Kingdom of Majorca, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of Sicily, and, briefly, the Duchies of Athens and Neopatras, were incorporated into the dynastic domains of the House of Aragon. The expansion was accompanied by a great development of the Catalan trade, creating an extensive trade network across the Mediterranean which competed with those of the maritime republics of Genoa and Venice.


title: Catalonia

text: At the same time, the Principality of Catalonia developed a complex institutional and political system based in the concept of a pact between the estates of the realm and the king. Laws had to be approved in the Catalan Courts ("Corts Catalanes"), one of the first parliamentary bodies of Europe that, since 1283, obtained the power to create legislation with the monarch. The Courts were composed of the three Estates organized in to "arms" ("braços"), were presided over by the monarch, and approved the Catalan constitutions, which established a compilation of rights for the inhabitants of the Principality. In order to collect general taxes, the Courts of 1359 established a permanent representative of deputies position, called the Deputation of the General (and later usually known as Generalitat), which gained considerable political power over the next centuries.


title: Catalonia

text: The domains of the Aragonese Crown were severely affected by the Black Death pandemic and by later outbreaks of the plague. Between 1347 and 1497 Catalonia lost 37 percent of its population. In 1410, the last reigning monarch of the House of Barcelona, King Martin I died without surviving descendants. Under the Compromise of Caspe (1412), Ferdinand from the Castilian House of Trastámara received the Crown of Aragon as Ferdinand I of Aragon. During the reign of his son, John II, social and political tensions caused the Catalan Civil War (1462–1472) and the War of the Remences (1462-1486). The Sentencia Arbitral de Guadalupe (1486) liberated the remença peasants from the feudal evil customs.


title: Catalonia

text: In the later Middle Ages, Catalan literature flourished in Catalonia proper and in the kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia, with such remarkable authors as the philosopher Ramon Llull, the Valencian poet Ausiàs March, and Joanot Martorell, author of the novel Tirant lo Blanch, published in 1490.


title: Catalonia

text: Ferdinand II of Aragon, the grandson of Ferdinand I, and Queen Isabella I of Castile were married in 1469, later taking the title the Catholic Monarchs; subsequently, this event was seen by historiographers as the dawn of a unified Spain. At this time, though united by marriage, the Crowns of Castile and Aragon maintained distinct territories, each keeping its own traditional institutions, parliaments, laws and currency. Castile commissioned expeditions to the Americas and benefited from the riches acquired in the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, but, in time, also carried the main burden of military expenses of the united Spanish kingdoms. After Isabella's death, Ferdinand II personally ruled both crowns.


title: Catalonia

text: By virtue of descent from his maternal grandparents, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, in 1516 Charles I of Spain became the first king to rule the Crowns of Castile and Aragon simultaneously by his own right. Following the death of his paternal (House of Habsburg) grandfather, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, he was also elected Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1519.


title: Catalonia

text: Over the next few centuries, the Principality of Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to an increased centralization of power in Spain. Despite this fact, between the 16th and 18th centuries, the participation of the political community in the local and the general Catalan government grew (thus consolidating its constitutional system), while the kings remained absent, represented by a viceroy. Tensions between Catalan institutions and the Monarchy began to arise. The large and burdensome presence of the Spanish royal army in the Principality due to the Franco-Spanish War led to an uprising of peasants, provoking the Reapers' War (1640–1652), which saw Catalonia rebel (briefly as a republic led by the chairman of the Generalitat, Pau Claris) with French help against the Spanish Crown for overstepping Catalonia's rights during the Thirty Years' War. Within a brief period France took full control of Catalonia. Most of Catalonia was reconquered by the Spanish Monarchy but Catalan rights were recognised. Roussillon and half of Cerdanya was lost to France by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659).


title: Catalonia

text: The most significant conflict concerning the governing monarchy was the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1715), which began when the childless Charles II of Spain, the last Spanish Habsburg, died without an heir in 1700. Charles II had chosen Philip V of Spain from the French House of Bourbon. Catalonia, like other territories that formed the Crown of Aragon, rose up in support of the Austrian Habsburg pretender Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, in his claim for the Spanish throne as Charles III of Spain. The fight between the houses of Bourbon and Habsburg for the Spanish Crown split Spain and Europe.


title: Catalonia

text: The fall of Barcelona on 11 September 1714 to the Bourbon king Philip V militarily ended the Habsburg claim to the Spanish Crown, which became legal fact in the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip felt that he had been betrayed by the Catalan Courts, as it had initially sworn its loyalty to him when he had presided over it in 1701. In retaliation for the betrayal, and inspired by the French absolutist style of government, the first Bourbon king introduced the Nueva Planta decrees, that incorporated the realms of the Crown of Aragon, including the Principality of Catalonia, as province of the Crown of Castile in 1716, terminating their separate institutions, laws and rights, as well as their politics, within a united kingdom of Spain. From the second third of 18th century onwards Catalonia carried out a successful process of proto-industrialization, reinforced in the late quarter of the century when Castile's trade monopoly with American colonies ended.


title: Catalonia

text: After the War of the Spanish Succession, the assimilation of the Crown of Aragon by the Castilian Crown through the Nueva Planta Decrees, was the first step in the creation of the Spanish nation state. And like other European nation-states in formation, it was not on a uniform ethnic basis, but by imposing the political and cultural characteristics of the capital, in this case Madrid and Central Spain, on those of the other areas, whose inhabitants would become national minorities to be assimilated through nationalist policies. These nationalist policies, sometimes very aggressive, and still in force, have been and are the seed of repeated territorial conflicts within the state.


title: Catalonia

text: At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Catalonia was severely affected by the Napoleonic Wars. In 1808, it was occupied by French troops; the resistance against the occupation eventually developed into the Peninsular War. The rejection to French dominion was institutionalized with the creation of "juntas" (councils) who, remaining loyal to the Bourbons, exercised the sovereignty and representation of the territory due to the disappearance of the old institutions. Napoleon took direct control of Catalonia to reestablish order, creating the Government of Catalonia under the rule of Marshall Augereau, and making Catalan briefly an official language again. Between 1812 and 1814, Catalonia was annexed to France and organized as four departments. The French troops evacuated Catalan territory at the end of 1814. After the Bourbon restoration in Spain and the death of the absolutist king Ferdinand VII (1833), Carlist Wars erupted against the newly established liberal state of Isabella II. Catalonia was divided, the coast and most industrialized areas support liberalism, while many inland areas were in the hands of the Carlist faction, as the latter proposed to reestablish the institutional systems suppressed by the Nueva Planta decrees in the ancient realms of the Crown of Aragon. The consolidation of the liberal state saw a new territorial division of Spain into provinces, including Catalonia, which was divided into four (Barcelona, Girona, Lleida and Tarragona).


title: Catalonia

text: In the second third of the 19th century, Catalonia became an important industrial center, particularly focused on textiles. This process was a consequence of the conditions of proto-industrialization of the prior two centuries in the area and boosted by, among other factors, national , although the policy of the Spanish government during those times oscillated between free trade and protectionism. Along the century, textile industry flourished in urban areas and in the countryside, usually in the form of company towns. To this day it remains one of the most industrialised areas of Spain. In 1832 it was inaugurated in Barcelona the Bonaplata Factory, the first one of the country to make use of the steam engine. In 1848 the first railway in the Iberian Peninsula was built between Barcelona and Mataró.


title: Catalonia

text: During those decades, Barcelona was the focus of important revolutionary uprisings known as "bullangues", causing a conflictive relation between many sectors of Catalan society and the central government and, in Catalonia, a republican current began to develop; also, inevitably, many Catalans favored the federalization of Spain. Meanwhile, the Catalan language saw a cultural renaissance from the second third of the century onwards, the "Renaixença", among both the working class and the bourgeoisie. Right after the fall of the First Spanish Republic (1873–1874) and the subsequent restoration of the Bourbon dynasty (1874), Catalan nationalism began to be organized politically under the leadership of the republican federalist Valentí Almirall.


title: Catalonia

text: The anarchist movement had been active throughout the last quarter of the 19th century and the early 20th century, founding the CNT trade union in 1910 and achieving one of the first eight-hour workday in Europe in 1919. Growing resentment of conscription and of the military culminated in the Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909. Under the hegemony of the Regionalist League, Catalonia gained a degree of administrative unity for the first time in the Modern era. In 1914, the four Catalan provinces were authorized to create a commonwealth (Catalan: "Mancomunitat de Catalunya"), without any legislative power or specific political autonomy which carried out an ambitious program of modernization, but it was disbanded in 1925 by the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930). During the last stage of the Dictatorship, Barcelona celebrated the 1929 International Exposition, while Spain began to suffer an economic crisis.


title: Catalonia

text: After the fall of the dictatorship and a brief proclamation of the Catalan Republic during the events of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic (14–17 April 1931), Catalonia received in 1932 its first Statute of Autonomy from the Spanish Republic's Parliament, granting it a considerable degree of self-government, establishing an autonomous body, the Generalitat of Catalonia, which included a parliament, an executive council and a court of appeal, and the left-wing independentist leader Francesc Macià was appointed its first president. Under the Statute, Catalan became an official language. The governments of the Republican Generalitat, led by the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) members Francesc Macià (1931–1933) and Lluís Companys (1933–1940), sought to implement an advanced and progressive social agenda, despite the internal difficulties. This period was marked by political unrest, the effects of the economic crisis and their social repercussions. The Statute of Autonomy was suspended in 1934, due to the Events of 6 October in Barcelona, as a response to the accession of right-wing Spanish nationalist party CEDA to the government of the Republic, considered close to fascism.


title: Catalonia

text: After the electoral victory of the left wing Popular Front in February 1936, the Government of Catalonia was pardoned and the self-government restored.


title: Catalonia

text: The defeat of the military rebellion against the Republican government in Barcelona placed Catalonia firmly in the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. During the war, there were two rival powers in Catalonia: the de jure power of the Generalitat and the de facto power of the armed popular militias. Violent confrontations between the workers' parties (CNT-FAI and POUM against the PSUC) culminated in the defeat of the first ones in 1937. The situation resolved itself progressively in favor of the Generalitat, but at the same time the Generalitat was partially losing its autonomous power within Republican Spain. In 1938 Franco's troops broke the Republican territory in two, isolating Catalonia from the rest of the Republic. The defeat of the Republican army in the Battle of the Ebro led in 1938 and 1939 to the occupation of Catalonia by Franco's forces.


title: Catalonia

text: The defeat of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War brought to power the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, whose first ten-year rule was particularly violent, autocratic, and repressive both in a political, cultural, social, and economical sense. In Catalonia, any kind of public activities associated with Catalan nationalism, republicanism, anarchism, socialism, liberalism, democracy or communism, including the publication of books on those subjects or simply discussion of them in open meetings, was banned. Franco's regime banned the use of Catalan in government-run institutions and during public events, and also the Catalan institutions of self-government were abolished. The pro-Republic of Spain president of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, was taken to Spain from his exile in the German-occupied France, and was tortured and executed in the Montjuïc Castle of Barcelona for the crime of 'military rebellion'.


title: Catalonia

text: During later stages of Francoist Spain, certain folkloric and religious celebrations in Catalan resumed and were tolerated. Use of Catalan in the mass media had been forbidden, but was permitted from the early 1950s in the theatre. Despite the ban during the first years and the difficulties of the next period, publishing in Catalan continued throughout his rule.


title: Catalonia

text: The years after the war were extremely hard. Catalonia, like many other parts of Spain, had been devastated by the war. Recovery from the war damage was slow and made more difficult by the international trade embargo and the autarkic politics of Franco's regime. By the late 1950s the region had recovered its pre-war economic levels and in the 1960s was the second fastest growing economy in the world in what became known as the Spanish miracle. During this period there was a spectacular growth of industry and tourism in Catalonia that drew large numbers of workers to the region from across Spain and made the area around Barcelona into one of Europe's largest industrial metropolitan areas.


title: Catalonia

text: After Franco's death in 1975, Catalonia voted for the adoption of a democratic Spanish Constitution in 1978, in which Catalonia recovered political and cultural autonomy, restoring the Generalitat (exiled since the end of the Civil War in 1939) in 1977 and adopting a new Statute of Autonomy in 1979, which defined Catalonia as a "nationality". First election to the Parliament of Catalonia under this Statute gave the Catalan presidency to Jordi Pujol, leader of Convergència i Unió (CiU), a center-right Catalan nationalist electoral coalition. Pujol would hold the position until 2003. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the institutions of Catalan autonomy were deployed, among them an autonomous police force ("Mossos d'Esquadra", in 1983), and the broadcasting network Televisió de Catalunya and its first channel TV3, created in 1983. An extensive program of normalization of Catalan language was carried out. Today, Catalonia remains one of the most economically dynamic communities of Spain. The Catalan capital and largest city, Barcelona, is a major international cultural centre and a major tourist destination. In 1992, Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympic Games.


title: Catalonia

text: In November 2003, elections to the Parliament of Catalonia gave the government to a left-wing catalanist coalition formed by the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC-PSOE), Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia Greens (ICV), and the socialist Pasqual Maragall was appointed president. The new government redacted a new version of the Statute of Autonomy, with the aim of consolidate and expand certain aspects of self-government.


title: Catalonia

text: The new Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, approved after a referendum in 2006, was contested by important sectors of the Spanish society, especially by the conservative People's Party, which sent the law to the Constitutional Court of Spain. In 2010, the Court declared non-valid some of the articles that established an autonomous Catalan system of Justice, improved aspects of the financing, a new territorial division, the status of Catalan language or the symbolical declaration of Catalonia as a nation. This decision was severely contested by large sectors of Catalan society, which increased the demands of independence.


title: Catalonia

text: A controversial independence referendum was held in Catalonia on 1 October 2017, using a disputed voting process. It was declared illegal and suspended by the Constitutional Court of Spain, because it breached the 1978 Constitution. Subsequent developments saw, on 27 October 2017, a symbolic declaration of independence by the Parliament of Catalonia, the enforcement of direct rule by the Spanish government through the use of Article 155 of the Constitution, the dismissal of the Executive Council and the dissolution of the Parliament, with a snap regional election called for 21 December 2017, which ended with a victory of pro-independence parties. Former President Carles Puigdemont and five former cabinet ministers fled Spain and took refuge in other European countries (such as Belgium, in Puigdemont's case), whereas nine other cabinet members, including vice-president Oriol Junqueras, were sentenced to prison under various charges of rebellion, sedition, and misuse of public funds. Quim Torra became the 131st President of the Government of Catalonia on 17 May 2018, after the Spanish courts blocked three other candidates.


title: Catalonia

text: In 2018, the Assemblea Nacional Catalana joined the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) on behalf of Catalonia.


title: Catalonia

text: On 14 October 2019, the Spanish Supreme court sentenced several Catalan political leaders, involved in organizing a referendum on Catalonia's independence from Spain, and convicted them on charges ranging from sedition to misuse of public funds, with sentences ranging from 9 to 13 years in prison. This decision sparked demonstrations around Catalonia. They were later pardoned by the Spanish government and left prison in June 2021.


title: Catalonia

text: The climate of Catalonia is diverse. The populated areas lying by the coast in Tarragona, Barcelona and Girona provinces feature a Hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csa"). The inland part (including the Lleida province and the inner part of Barcelona province) show a mostly Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csa"). The Pyrenean peaks have a continental (Köppen "D") or even Alpine climate (Köppen "ET") at the highest summits, while the valleys have a maritime or oceanic climate sub-type (Köppen "Cfb").


title: Catalonia

text: In the Mediterranean area, summers are dry and hot with sea breezes, and the maximum temperature is around . Winter is cool or slightly cold depending on the location. It snows frequently in the Pyrenees, and it occasionally snows at lower altitudes, even by the coastline. Spring and autumn are typically the rainiest seasons, except for the Pyrenean valleys, where summer is typically stormy.


title: Catalonia

text: The inland part of Catalonia is hotter and drier in summer. Temperature may reach , some days even . Nights are cooler there than at the coast, with the temperature of around . Fog is not uncommon in valleys and plains; it can be especially persistent, with freezing drizzle episodes and subzero temperatures during winter, mainly along the Ebro and Segre valleys and in Plain of Vic.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia has a marked geographical diversity, considering the relatively small size of its territory. The geography is conditioned by the Mediterranean coast, with of coastline, and the towering Pyrenees along the long northern border. Catalonia is divided into three main geomorphological units:


title: Catalonia

text: The Catalan Pyrenees represent almost half in length of the Pyrenees, as it extends more than . Traditionally differentiated the Axial Pyrenees (the main part) and the Pre-Pyrenees (southern from the Axial) which are mountainous formations parallel to the main mountain ranges but with lower altitudes, less steep and a different geological formation. The highest mountain of Catalonia, located north of the comarca of Pallars Sobirà is the Pica d'Estats (3,143 m), followed by the Puigpedrós (2,914 m). The Serra del Cadí comprises the highest peaks in the Pre-Pyrenees and forms the southern boundary of the Cerdanya valley.


title: Catalonia

text: The Central Catalan Depression is a plain located between the Pyrenees and Pre-Coastal Mountains. Elevation ranges from . The plains and the water that descend from the Pyrenees have made it fertile territory for agriculture and numerous irrigation canals have been built. Another major plain is the Empordà, located in the northeast.


title: Catalonia

text: The Catalan Mediterranean system is based on two ranges running roughly parallel to the coast (southwest–northeast), called the Coastal and the Pre-Coastal Ranges. The Coastal Range is both the shorter and the lower of the two, while the Pre-Coastal is greater in both length and elevation. Areas within the Pre-Coastal Range include Montserrat, Montseny and the Ports de Tortosa-Beseit. Lowlands alternate with the Coastal and Pre-Coastal Ranges. The Coastal Lowland is located to the East of the Coastal Range between it and the coast, while the Pre-Coastal Lowlands are located inland, between the Coastal and Pre-Coastal Ranges, and includes the Vallès and Penedès plains.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia is a showcase of European landscapes on a small scale. Just over hosting a variety of substrates, soils, climates, directions, altitudes and distances to the sea. The area is of great ecological diversity and a remarkable wealth of landscapes, habitats and species.


title: Catalonia

text: The fauna of Catalonia comprises a minority of animals endemic to the region and a majority of non-native animals. Much of Catalonia enjoys a Mediterranean climate (except mountain areas), which makes many of the animals that live there adapted to Mediterranean ecosystems. Of mammals, there are plentiful wild boar, red foxes, as well as roe deer and in the Pyrenees, the Pyrenean chamois. Other large species such as the bear have been recently reintroduced.


title: Catalonia

text: Waters of Balearic Sea are rich in biodiversity, and even the megafaunas of ocean; various type of whales (such as fin, sperm, and pilot) and dolphins live within the area.


title: Catalonia

text: Most of Catalonia belongs to the Mediterranean Basin. The Catalan hydrographic network consists of two important basins, the one of the Ebro and the one that comprises the internal basins of Catalonia (respectively covering 46.84% and 51.43% of the territory), all of them flow to the Mediterranean. Furthermore, there is the Garona river basin that flows to the Atlantic Ocean, but it only covers 1.73% of the Catalan territory.


title: Catalonia

text: The hydrographic network can be divided in two sectors, an occidental slope or Ebro river slope and one oriental slope constituted by minor rivers that flow to the Mediterranean along the Catalan coast. The first slope provides an average of per year, while the second only provides an average of /year. The difference is due to the big contribution of the Ebro river, from which the Segre is an important tributary. Moreover, in Catalonia there is a relative wealth of groundwaters, although there is inequality between "comarques", given the complex geological structure of the territory. In the Pyrenees there are many small lakes, remnants of the ice age. The biggest are the lake of Banyoles and the recently recovered lake of Ivars.


title: Catalonia

text: The Catalan coast is almost rectilinear, with a length of and few landforms—the most relevant are the Cap de Creus and the Gulf of Roses to the north and the Ebro Delta to the south. The Catalan Coastal Range hugs the coastline, and it is split into two segments, one between L'Estartit and the town of Blanes (the Costa Brava), and the other at the south, at the Costes del Garraf.


title: Catalonia

text: The principal rivers in Catalonia are the Ter, Llobregat, and the Ebro (Catalan: ), all of which run into the Mediterranean.


title: Catalonia

text: The majority of Catalan population is concentrated in 30% of the territory, mainly in the coastal plains. Intensive agriculture, livestock farming and industrial activities have been accompanied by a massive tourist influx (more than 20 million annual visitors), a rate of urbanization and even of major metropolisation which has led to a strong urban sprawl: two thirds of Catalans live in the urban area of Barcelona, while the proportion of urban land increased from 4.2% in 1993 to 6.2% in 2009, a growth of 48.6% in sixteen years, complemented with a dense network of transport infrastructure. This is accompanied by a certain agricultural abandonment (decrease of 15% of all areas cultivated in Catalonia between 1993 and 2009) and a global threat to natural environment. Human activities have also put some animal species at risk, or even led to their disappearance from the territory, like the gray wolf and probably the brown bear of the Pyrenees. The pressure created by this model of life means that the country's ecological footprint exceeds its administrative area.


title: Catalonia

text: Faced with these problems, Catalan authorities initiated several measures whose purpose is to protect natural ecosystems. Thus, in 1990, the Catalan government created the Nature Conservation Council (Catalan: ), an advisory body with the aim to study, protect and manage the natural environments and landscapes of Catalonia. In addition, the Generalitat has carried out the Plan of Spaces of Natural Interest ( or PEIN) in 1992 while eighteen Natural Spaces of Special Protection ( or ENPE) have been instituted.


title: Catalonia

text: There's a National Park, Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici; fourteen Natural Parks, Alt Pirineu, Aiguamolls de l'Empordà, Cadí-Moixeró, Cap de Creus, Sources of Ter and Freser, Collserola, Ebro Delta, Ports, Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter, Montseny, Montserrat, Sant Llorenç del Munt and l'Obac, Serra de Montsant and the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone; as well as three Natural Places of National Interest ( or PNIN), the Pedraforca, the Poblet Forest and the Albères.


title: Catalonia

text: After Franco's death in 1975 and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain in 1978, Catalonia recovered and extended the powers that it had gained in the Statute of Autonomy of 1932 but lost with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.


title: Catalonia

text: This autonomous community has gradually achieved more autonomy since the approval of the Spanish Constitution of 1978. The Generalitat holds exclusive jurisdiction in education, health, culture, environment, communications, transportation, commerce, public safety and local government, and only shares jurisdiction with the Spanish government in justice. In all, some analysts argue that formally the current system grants Catalonia with "more self-government than almost any other corner in Europe".


title: Catalonia

text: The support for Catalan nationalism ranges from a demand for further autonomy and the federalisation of Spain to the desire for independence from the rest of Spain, expressed by Catalan independentists. The first survey following the Constitutional Court ruling that cut back elements of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy, published by "La Vanguardia" on 18 July 2010, found that 46% of the voters would support independence in a referendum. In February of the same year, a poll by the Open University of Catalonia gave more or less the same results. Other polls have shown lower support for independence, ranging from 40 to 49%. Although it is established in the whole of the territory, support for independence is significantly higher in the hinterland and the northeast, away from the more populated coastal areas such as Barcelona.


title: Catalonia

text: Since 2011 when the question started to be regularly surveyed by the governmental Center for Public Opinion Studies (CEO), support for Catalan independence has been on the rise. According to the CEO opinion poll from July 2016, 47.7% of Catalans would vote for independence and 42.4% against it while, about the question of preferences, according to the CEO opinion poll from March 2016, a 57.2 claim to be "absolutely" or "fairly" in favour of independence. Other polls have shown lower support for independence, ranging from 40 to 49%. Other polls show more variable results, according with the Spanish CIS, as of December 2016, 47% of Catalans rejected independence and 45% supported it.


title: Catalonia

text: In hundreds of non-binding local referendums on independence, organised across Catalonia from 13 September 2009, a large majority voted for independence, although critics argued that the polls were mostly held in pro-independence areas. In December 2009, 94% of those voting backed independence from Spain, on a turn-out of 25%. The final local referendum was held in Barcelona, in April 2011. On 11 September 2012, a pro-independence march pulled in a crowd of between 600,000 (according to the Spanish Government), 1.5 million (according to the Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona), and 2 million (according to its promoters); whereas poll results revealed that half the population of Catalonia supported secession from Spain.


title: Catalonia

text: Two major factors were Spain's Constitutional Court's 2010 decision to declare part of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia unconstitutional, as well as the fact that Catalonia contributes 19.49% of the central government's tax revenue, but only receives 14.03% of central government's spending.


title: Catalonia

text: Parties that consider themselves either Catalan nationalist or independentist have been present in all Catalan governments since 1980. The largest Catalan nationalist party, Convergence and Union, ruled Catalonia from 1980 to 2003, and returned to power in the 2010 election. Between 2003 and 2010, a leftist coalition, composed by the Catalan Socialists' Party, the pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia and the leftist-environmentalist Initiative for Catalonia-Greens, implemented policies that widened Catalan autonomy.


title: Catalonia

text: In the 25 November 2012 Catalan parliamentary election, sovereigntist parties supporting a secession referendum gathered 59.01% of the votes and held 87 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament. Parties supporting independence from the rest of Spain obtained 49.12% of the votes and a majority of 74 seats.


title: Catalonia

text: Artur Mas, then the president of Catalonia, organised early elections that took place on 27 September 2015. In these elections, Convergència and Esquerra Republicana decided to join, and they presented themselves under the coalition named "Junts pel Sí" (in Catalan, "Together for Yes"). "Junts pel Sí" won 62 seats and was the most voted party, and CUP (Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, a far-left and independentist party) won another 10, so the sum of all the independentist forces/parties was 72 seats, reaching an absolute majority, but not in number of individual votes, comprising 47,74% of the total.


title: Catalonia

text: The Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia is the fundamental organic law, second only to the Spanish Constitution from which the Statute originates.


title: Catalonia

text: In the Spanish Constitution of 1978 Catalonia, along with the Basque Country and Galicia, was defined as a "nationality". The same constitution gave Catalonia the automatic right to autonomy, which resulted in the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 1979.


title: Catalonia

text: Both the 1979 Statute of Autonomy and the current one, approved in 2006, state that "Catalonia, as a nationality, exercises its self-government constituted as an Autonomous Community in accordance with the Constitution and with the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, which is its basic institutional law, always under the law in Spain".


title: Catalonia

text: The Preamble of the 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia states that the Parliament of Catalonia has defined Catalonia as a nation, but that "the Spanish Constitution recognizes Catalonia's national reality as a nationality". While the Statute was approved by and sanctioned by both the Catalan and Spanish parliaments, and later by referendum in Catalonia, it has been subject to a legal challenge by the surrounding autonomous communities of Aragon, Balearic Islands and Valencia, as well as by the conservative People's Party. The objections are based on various issues such as disputed cultural heritage but, especially, on the Statute's alleged breaches of the principle of "solidarity between regions" in fiscal and educational matters enshrined by the Constitution.


title: Catalonia

text: Spain's Constitutional Court assessed the disputed articles and on 28 June 2010, issued its judgment on the principal allegation of unconstitutionality presented by the People's Party in 2006. The judgment granted clear passage to 182 articles of the 223 that make up the fundamental text. The court approved 73 of the 114 articles that the People's Party had contested, while declaring 14 articles unconstitutional in whole or in part and imposing a restrictive interpretation on 27 others. The court accepted the specific provision that described Catalonia as a "nation", however ruled that it was a historical and cultural term with no legal weight, and that Spain remained the only nation recognised by the constitution.


title: Catalonia

text: The Catalan Statute of Autonomy establishes that Catalonia, as an autonomous community, is organised politically through the Generalitat of Catalonia (Catalan: ), conformed by the Parliament, the Presidency of the Generalitat, the Government or Executive Council and the other institutions established by the Parliament, among them the Ombudsman (), the Office of Auditors () the Council for Statutory Guarantees () or the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia ().


title: Catalonia

text: The Parliament of Catalonia (Catalan: ) is the unicameral legislative body of the Generalitat and represents the people of Catalonia. Its 135 members ("diputats") are elected by universal suffrage to serve for a four-year period. According to the Statute of Autonomy, it has powers to legislate over devolved matters such as education, health, culture, internal institutional and territorial organization, nomination of the President of the Generalitat and control the Government, budget and other affairs. The last Catalan election was held on 14 February 2021, and its current speaker (president) is Laura Borràs, incumbent since 12 March 2018.


title: Catalonia

text: The President of the Generalitat of Catalonia (Catalan: ) is the highest representative of Catalonia, and is also responsible of leading the government's action, presiding the Executive Council. Since the restoration of the Generalitat on the return of democracy in Spain, the Presidents of Catalonia have been Josep Tarradellas (1977–1980, president in exile since 1954), Jordi Pujol (1980–2003), Pasqual Maragall (2003–2006), José Montilla (2006–2010), Artur Mas (2010–2016), Carles Puigdemont (2016–2017) and, after the imposition of direct rule from Madrid, Quim Torra (2018–2020) and Pere Aragonès (2021–).


title: Catalonia

text: The Executive Council (Catalan: ) or Government (), is the body responsible of the government of the Generalitat, it holds executive and regulatory power, being accountable to the Catalan Parliament. It comprises the President of the Generalitat, the First Minister () or the Vice President, and the ministers () appointed by the president. Its seat is the Palau de la Generalitat, Barcelona. In 2021 the government was a coalition of two parties, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (Junts) and is made up of 14 ministers, including the vice President, alongside to the president and a secretary of government, but in October 2022 Together for Catalonia (Junts) left the coalition and the government.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia has its own police force, the (officially called ), whose origins date back to the 18th century. Since 1980 they have been under the command of the Generalitat, and since 1994 they have expanded in number in order to replace the national Civil Guard and National Police Corps, which report directly to the Homeland Department of Spain. The national bodies retain personnel within Catalonia to exercise functions of national scope such as overseeing ports, airports, coasts, international borders, custom offices, the identification of documents and arms control, immigration control, terrorism prevention, arms trafficking prevention, amongst others.


title: Catalonia

text: Most of the justice system is administered by national judicial institutions, the highest body and last judicial instance in the Catalan jurisdiction, integrating the Spanish judiciary, is the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. The criminal justice system is uniform throughout Spain, while civil law is administered separately within Catalonia. The civil laws that are subject to autonomous legislation have been codified in the Civil Code of Catalonia () since 2002.


title: Catalonia

text: Navarre, the Basque Country and Catalonia are the Spanish communities with the highest degree of autonomy in terms of law enforcement.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia is organised territorially into provinces, further subdivided into comarques and municipalities. The 2006 Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia establishes the administrative organisation of three local authorities: vegueries, comarques, and municipalities.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia is divided administratively into four provinces, the governing body of which is the Provincial Deputation (, ). The four provinces and their populations are:


title: Catalonia

text: Comarques (singular: "comarca") are entities composed by the municipalities to manage their responsibilities and services. The current regional division has its roots in a decree of the Generalitat de Catalunya of 1936, in effect until 1939, when it was suppressed by Franco. In 1987 the Catalan Government reestablished the comarcal division and in 1988 three new comarques were added (Alta Ribagorça, Pla d'Urgell and Pla de l'Estany). In 2015 was created an additional comarca, the Moianès. At present there are 41, excluding Aran. Every comarca is administered by a comarcal council ().


title: Catalonia

text: The Aran Valley (Val d'Aran), previously considered a comarca, obtained in 1990 a particular status within Catalonia due to its differences in culture and language, as Occitan is the native language of the Valley, being administered by a body known as the (General Council of Aran). Since 2015 it is definied as "unique territorial entity", while the powers of the Conselh Generau were expanded.


title: Catalonia

text: There are at present 947 municipalities () in Catalonia. Each municipality is run by a council () elected every four years by the residents in local elections. The council consists of a number of members () depending on population, who elect the mayor ( or ). Its seat is the town hall (, or ).


title: Catalonia

text: The "vegueria" is a proposed type of division defined as a specific territorial area for the exercise of government and inter-local cooperation with legal personality. The current Statute of Autonomy states vegueries are intended to supersede provinces in Catalonia, and take over many of functions of the comarques.


title: Catalonia

text: The territorial plan of Catalonia () provided six general functional areas, but was amended by Law 24/2001, of 31 December, recognizing the Alt Pirineu i Aran as a new functional area differentiated of Ponent. On 14 July 2010 the Catalan Parliament approved the creation of the functional area of the Penedès.


title: Catalonia

text: A highly industrialized land, the nominal GDP of Catalonia in 2018 was €228 billion (second after the community of Madrid, €230 billion) and the per capita GDP was €30,426 ($32,888), behind Madrid (€35,041), the Basque Country (€33,223), and Navarre (€31,389). That year, the GDP growth was 2.3%. In recent years, and increasingly following the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017, there has been a negative net relocation rate of companies based in Catalonia moving to other autonomous communities of Spain. From the 2017 independence referendum until the end of 2018, for example, Catalonia lost 5454 companies to other parts of Spain (mainly Madrid), 2359 only in 2018, gaining 467 new ones from the rest of the country during 2018.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia's long-term credit rating is BB (Non-Investment Grade) according to Standard & Poor's, Ba2 (Non-Investment Grade) according to Moody's, and BBB- (Low Investment Grade) according to Fitch Ratings. Catalonia's rating is tied for worst with between 1 and 5 other autonomous communities of Spain, depending on the rating agency.


title: Catalonia

text: The Catalan capital, despite the current moment of crisis, is also one of the European bases of "reference for start-ups" and the fifth city in the world to establish one of these companies, behind London, Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam, according to the Eu-Starts-Up 2020 study.


title: Catalonia

text: Barcelona is behind London, New York, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Dubai and Singapore and ahead of Los Angeles and Madrid.


title: Catalonia

text: In the context of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Catalonia was expected to suffer a recession amounting to almost a 2% contraction of its regional GDP in 2009. Catalonia's debt in 2012 was the highest of all Spain's autonomous communities, reaching €13,476 million, i.e. 38% of the total debt of the 17 autonomous communities, but in recent years its economy recovered a positive evolution and the GDP grew a 3.3% in 2015.


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia is amongst the List of country subdivisions by GDP over 100 billion US dollars and is a member of the Four Motors for Europe organisation.


title: Catalonia

text: The main tourist destinations in Catalonia are the city of Barcelona, the beaches of the Costa Brava in Girona, the beaches of the Costa del Maresme and Costa del Garraf from Malgrat de Mar to Vilanova i la Geltrú and the Costa Daurada in Tarragona. In the High Pyrenees there are several ski resorts, near Lleida. On 1 November 2012, Catalonia started charging a tourist tax. The revenue is used to promote tourism, and to maintain and upgrade tourism-related infrastructure.


title: Catalonia

text: Many savings banks were based in Catalonia before the independence referendum of 2017, with 10 of the 46 Spanish savings banks having headquarters in the region at that time. This list included Europe's premier savings bank, La Caixa, who, on 7 October 2017, a week after the referendum, moved its headquarters to Palma de Mallorca, in the Balearic Islands and CaixaBank to Valencia, in the Valencian Community. The first private bank in Catalonia, Banc Sabadell, ranked fourth among all Spanish private banks, also moved its headquarters to Alicante, in the Valencian Community.


title: Catalonia

text: The stock market of Barcelona, which in 2016 had a volume of around €152 billion, is the second largest of Spain after Madrid, and Fira de Barcelona organizes international exhibitions and congresses to do with different sectors of the economy.


title: Catalonia

text: The main economic cost for the Catalan families is the purchase of a home. According to data from the Society of Appraisal on 31 December 2005 Catalonia is, after Madrid, the second most expensive region in Spain for housing: 3,397 €/m on average (see Spanish property bubble).


title: Catalonia

text: Airports in Catalonia are owned and operated by Aena (a Spanish Government entity) except two airports in Lleida which are operated by Aeroports de Catalunya (an entity belonging to the Government of Catalonia).


title: Catalonia

text: Since the Middle Ages, Catalonia has been well integrated into international maritime networks. The port of Barcelona (owned and operated by , a Spanish Government entity) is an industrial, commercial and tourist port of worldwide importance. With 1,950,000 TEUs in 2015, it is the first container port in Catalonia, the third in Spain after Valencia and Algeciras in Andalusia, the 9th in the Mediterranean Sea, the 14th in Europe and the 68th in the world. It is sixth largest cruise port in the world, the first in Europe and the Mediterranean with 2,364,292 passengers in 2014. The ports of Tarragona (owned and operated by Puertos del Estado) in the southwest and Palamós near Girona at northeast are much more modest. The port of Palamós and the other ports in Catalonia (26) are operated and administered by , a Catalan Government entity.


title: Catalonia

text: The development of these infrastructures, resulting from the topography and history of the Catalan territory, responds strongly to the administrative and political organization of this autonomous community.


title: Catalonia

text: The principal highways are  AP-7  () and  A-7  (). They follow the coast from the French border to Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia. The main roads generally radiate from Barcelona. The  AP-2  () and  A-2  () connect inland and onward to Madrid.


title: Catalonia

text: Public-own roads in Catalonia are either managed by the autonomous government of Catalonia (e.g.,  C-  roads) or the Spanish government (e.g.,  AP- ,  A- ,  N-  roads).


title: Catalonia

text: Catalonia saw the first railway construction in the Iberian Peninsula in 1848, linking Barcelona with Mataró. Given the topography most lines radiate from Barcelona. The city has both suburban and inter-city services. The main east coast line runs through the province connecting with the SNCF (French Railways) at Portbou on the coast.


title: Catalonia

text: There are two publicly owned railway companies operating in Catalonia: the Catalan FGC that operates commuter and regional services, and the Spanish national Renfe that operates long-distance and high-speed rail services (AVE and Avant) and the main commuter and regional service , administered by the Catalan government since 2010.


title: Catalonia

text: High-speed rail (AVE) services from Madrid currently reach Lleida, Tarragona and Barcelona. The official opening between Barcelona and Madrid took place 20 February 2008. The journey between Barcelona and Madrid now takes about two-and-a-half hours. A connection to the French high-speed TGV network has been completed (called the Perpignan–Barcelona high-speed rail line) and the Spanish AVE service began commercial services on the line 9 January 2013, later offering services to Marseille on their high speed network. This was shortly followed by the commencement of commercial service by the French TGV on 17 January 2013, leading to an average travel time on the Paris-Barcelona TGV route of 7h 42m. This new line passes through Girona and Figueres with a tunnel through the Pyrenees.


title: Catalonia

text: As of 2017, the official population of Catalonia was 7,522,596. 1,194,947 residents did not have Spanish citizenship, accounting for about 16% of the population.


title: Catalonia

text: The Urban Region of Barcelona includes 5,217,864 people and covers an area of . The metropolitan area of the Urban Region includes cities such as L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Sabadell, Terrassa, Badalona, Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Cornellà de Llobregat.


title: Catalonia

text: In 1900, the population of Catalonia was 1,966,382 people and in 1970 it was 5,122,567. The sizeable increase of the population was due to the demographic boom in Spain during the 60s and early 70s as well as in consequence of large-scale internal migration from the rural economically weak regions to its more prospering industrial cities. In Catalonia that wave of internal migration arrived from several regions of Spain, especially from Andalusia, Murcia and Extremadura. As of 1999 it was estimated that over 60% of Catalans descended from 20th century migrations from other parts of Spain.


title: Catalonia

text: Immigrants from other countries settled in Catalonia since the 1990s; a large percentage comes from Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, and smaller numbers from Asia and Southern Europe, often settling in urban centers such as Barcelona and industrial areas. In 2017, Catalonia had 940,497 foreign residents (11.9% of the total population) with non-Spanish ID cards, without including those who acquired the Spanish citizenship.


title: Catalonia

text: Historically, all the Catalan population was Christian, specifically Catholic, but since the 1980s there has been a trend of decline of Christianity. Nevertheless, according to the most recent study sponsored by the government of Catalonia, as of 2020, 62.3% of the Catalans identify as Christians (up from 61.9% in 2016 and 56.5% in 2014) of whom 53.0% Catholics, 7.0% Protestants and Evangelicals, 1.3% Orthodox Christians and 1.0% Jehovah's Witnesses. At the same time, 18.6% of the population identify as atheists, 8.8% as agnostics, 4.3% as Muslims, and a further 3.4% as being of other religions.


title: Catalonia

text: According to the linguistic census held by the Government of Catalonia in 2013, Spanish is the most spoken language in Catalonia (46.53% claim Spanish as "their own language"), followed by Catalan (37.26% claim Catalan as "their own language"). In everyday use, 11.95% of the population claim to use both languages equally, whereas 45.92% mainly use Spanish and 35.54% mainly use Catalan. There is a significant difference between the Barcelona metropolitan area (and, to a lesser extent, the Tarragona area), where Spanish is more spoken than Catalan, and the more rural and small town areas, where Catalan clearly prevails over Spanish.


title: Catalonia

text: Originating in the historic territory of Catalonia, Catalan has enjoyed special status since the approval of the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 which declares it to be "Catalonia's own language", a term which signifies a language given special legal status within a Spanish territory, or which is historically spoken within a given region. The other languages with official status in Catalonia are Spanish, which has official status throughout Spain, and Aranese Occitan, which is spoken in Val d'Aran.


title: Catalonia

text: Since the Statute of Autonomy of 1979, Aranese (a Gascon dialect of Occitan) has also been official and subject to special protection in Val d'Aran. This small area of 7,000 inhabitants was the only place where a dialect of Occitan had received full official status. Then, on 9 August 2006, when the new Statute came into force, Occitan became official throughout Catalonia. Occitan is the mother tongue of 22.4% of the population of Val d'Aran, which has attracted heavy immigration from other Spanish regions to work in the service industry. Catalan Sign Language is also officially recognised.


title: Catalonia

text: Although not considered an "official language" in the same way as Catalan, Spanish, and Occitan, the Catalan Sign Language, with about 18,000 users in Catalonia, is granted official recognition and support: "The public authorities shall guarantee the use of Catalan sign language and conditions of equality for deaf people who choose to use this language, which shall be the subject of education, protection and respect."


title: Catalonia

text: As was the case since the ascent of the Bourbon dynasty to the throne of Spain after the War of the Spanish Succession, and with the exception of the short period of the Second Spanish Republic, under Francoist Spain Catalan was banned from schools and all other official use, so that for example families were not allowed to officially register children with Catalan names. Although never completely banned, Catalan language publishing was severely restricted during the early 1940s, with only religious texts and small-run self-published texts being released. Some books were published clandestinely or circumvented the restrictions by showing publishing dates prior to 1936. This policy was changed in 1946, when restricted publishing in Catalan resumed.


title: Catalonia

text: Rural–urban migration originating in other parts of Spain also reduced the social use of Catalan in urban areas and increased the use of Spanish. Lately, a similar sociolinguistic phenomenon has occurred with foreign immigration. Catalan cultural activity increased in the 1960s and the teaching of Catalan began thanks to the initiative of associations such as Òmnium Cultural.


title: Catalonia

text: After the end of Francoist Spain, the newly established self-governing democratic institutions in Catalonia embarked on a long-term language policy to recover the use of Catalan and has, since 1983, enforced laws which attempt to protect and extend the use of Catalan. This policy, known as the "linguistic normalisation" ( in Catalan, in Spanish) has been supported by the vast majority of Catalan political parties through the last thirty years. Some groups consider these efforts a way to discourage the use of Spanish, whereas some others, including the Catalan government and the European Union consider the policies respectful, or even as an example which "should be disseminated throughout the Union".


title: Catalonia

text: Today, Catalan is the main language of the Catalan autonomous government and the other public institutions that fall under its jurisdiction. Basic public education is given basically in Catalan, but also there are some hours per week of Spanish medium instruction. Although businesses are required by law to display all information (e.g. menus, posters) at least in Catalan, this not systematically enforced. There is no obligation to display this information in either Occitan or Spanish, although there is no restriction on doing so in these or other languages. The use of fines was introduced in a 1997 linguistic law that aims to increase the public use of Catalan and defend the rights of Catalan speakers. On the other hand, the Spanish Constitution does not recognize equal language rights for national minorities since it enshrined Spanish as the only official language of the state, the knowledge of which being compulsory. Numerous laws regarding for instance the labelling of pharmaceutical products, make in effect Spanish the only language of compulsory use.


title: Catalonia

text: The law ensures that both Catalan and Spanish – being official languages – can be used by the citizens without prejudice in all public and private activities. The Generalitat uses Catalan in its communications and notifications addressed to the general population, but citizens can also receive information from the Generalitat in Spanish if they so desire. Debates in the Catalan Parliament take place almost exclusively in Catalan and the Catalan public television broadcasts programs basically in Catalan.


title: Catalonia

text: Due to the intense immigration which Spain in general and Catalonia in particular experienced in the first decade of the 21st century, many foreign languages are spoken in various cultural communities in Catalonia, of which Rif-Berber, Moroccan Arabic, Romanian and Urdu are the most common ones.