While Catalan is by no means one of the biggest languages spoken of in Europe, much less the world, it does have several million speakers, which is a completely acceptable amount to have a decently sized nation for itself on the order of Finnish or Norwegian. Yet currently, the only recognized Catalan-speaking country in the world is Andorra, a nation so small it is one of the collection of microstates whose full national identity is sometimes questioned by those who think that little states may not be fully viable on their own. How did this come to be? Let us explore the three parts of Catalonia and discuss how far along the path of nationhood they happen to be.

Andorra is the only recognized nation among the three parts, and it is a nation small enough that its existence has been viewed as being somehow questionable throughout its history. Like Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, the Vatican City, Luxembourg, Palau, Nauru, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands, and perhaps a few other nations as well, Andorra is a microstate which is dependent on a neighboring large nation for access to certain business markets and social benefits as well as defensive protection. Andorra was smart enough to be able to upgrade its initial protectors in the Bishop of Urgell (a diocese in Catalonia) and the count of Foix to the governments of Spain and France, whose jealous hostility towards anyone else ruling over the country has made them acceptable co-principalities over a small state whose remote terrain is nevertheless economically viable because of a low-tax model that encourages trade and that makes it a place for the purchase of luxury goods on the cheap. There are far worse models for national survival than being a wealthy small trading nation whose existence has been maintained for centuries because its two large neighbors would prefer to share rule over the land rather than fight the other for full control.

Spanish Catalonia, typically labeled just as Catalonia, is by far the largest section of the Catalan-speaking regions as a whole. If one is inclined to listen to the voice of the Catalan people, this is an area that already has and may well again express its desire for freedom through the vote, although its earlier referendum was decried as illegal by the Spanish and has led to a crackdown by Spain on Catalan ambitions which has, quite predictably, increased the tension between Catalonia and the Spanish central government in Madrid. While the relationship between Catalonia and the Spanish national government has been bad for centuries, with notable efforts at repression in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession, where Catalonia supported an Austrian candidate for the Spanish throne, and after the defeat of Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War, Catalonia’s current local parliament has traditions going back a thousand years or so to the days of the Counts of Barcelona. While the current government is a minority one, there is general majority support within the Catalan Parliament for independence despite the political divides in the region. With a population that is mobilized to defend Catalan identity that has survived centuries of hostility and attempts to suppress its language and culture, progress towards independence will require the establishment of a referendum that has the tolerance of Spain’s central government and likely some sort of EU oversight to involve a process of separation from Spain without separating from the European Union, tasks which will require diplomatic finesse in both Madrid and Brussels.

French Catalonia, also known as North Catalonia and the contemporary province of Pyrénées-Orientales, is perhaps the least developed of the regions of Catalonia in terms of its fervor for independence. The area is pretty sharply divided politically between the socialists and parties of the right, but in general there has been a certain degree of Catalan pride, although the region is still mostly French speaking. In recent years there have been attempts by the regional government to recognize Catalan as a provincial language, although French is still the only official language and only a slight majority of the people in the province can speak or understand Catalan, although if efforts at increasing language education are fruitful this percentage may increase in the future and encourage more autonomist efforts in the area. One effort that may bear fruit is the encouragement that the local provincial government has in creating a Eurodistrict that combines the three parts of Catalonia together to encourage cross-border cooperation and development, which may help to put the three regions back together as one coherent whole, something that should definitely be encouraged.

It is perhaps useless to speculate on the future of Catalonia as a nation. Despite a proud history as one of the first parts of Spain to be able to resist Muslim dominance, Catalonia’s language and culture will likely always remain of interest to a relatively small local community defined by the Pyrenees mountains and the Mediterranean sea and the river valleys and plains of the region. Yet this does not mean that as a small nation with a relatively unknown language that it does not deserve to be free, especially those parts of the region that have been under Spanish misrule and domination for centuries. The French, at least, have been more pragmatic in their efforts to convert the region to French ways, and less brutally repressive about it. It seems useless to speculate on a timetable as to when or if Spanish Catalonia will gain its national independence while remaining a part of the larger European project, or whether French Catalan efforts to encourage a Eurodistrict for the entire region will be successful, but the combination of desiring to work together while also having its own distinct identity and place is the sort of complex longing that I can well appreciate and wholeheartedly support.