Spain is a country with a strong stereotyped image. Most people associate it with sun, beach, paella, bullfighting and flamenco. However, if you are coming to Spain for the first time, its diversity - of language, culture, artistic traditions, and landscapes - as well as its fascinating mixture of people, is likely to be your biggest surprise.
In the northeast of the peninsula, on the Mediterranean side, lies Catalunya, one of Spain’s most fascinating and diverse regions, ranging from rocky coastlines to long flat beaches, from mountains to plains, and from marshlands to forest.

But Catalunya is much more than a sequence of splendid landscapes, it’s a region with a unique identity and an extraordinary historical heritage. The kingdom was founded as far back as the 9th century, and its people soon became famous for their seafaring, mercantile and commercial skills. By the end of the 14th century the kingdom ruled the Balearic Islands, the region of Valencia, Sardinia, Corsica and much of present day Greece. In 1359 the Catalan Generalitat formed Europe’s first parliamentary government, and Catalunya remained independent until the end of the 15th century, when it was united, through a royal marriage, to the emergent Spanish state.
However the region's independent spirit persisted throughout the following centuries, though harshly suppressed during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the almost forty years of dictatorship that followed. After the return of democracy the Catalan government was reinstated, and Catalunya is today a Comunitat Autonoma, or autonomous region, which has control over its own affairs.

Thus Catalunya is a country with a personality of its own. The Catalan people have a strong sense of identity and are very proud of their unique folklore, traditions, art and language.

The Catalan Language

The language spoken in Catalunya is Catalan, which has joint official status with Spanish (Castilian). Catalan is not a dialect, it is a language in its own right derived from Latin (as are French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian), with its ancient literary traditions and its own grammar. The mother tongue of about seven million people, it survived Franco’s attempts to suppress it and today is normally spoken in the regional TV, radio broadcasts, political institutions, schools and universities. But don’t worry, all Catalans also speak Spanish, and will use it once they realise you are a foreigner. In central Barcelona, where as much as half of the population was born to migrants from other parts of the country, and at the main tourist resorts, you’ll hear as much Spanish as Catalan.