Cataluña Overview

Cataluña’s achievements have lent credence to the region’s fierce sense of autonomy. In the late 18th century, the region became one of Europe’s premier textile manufacturers and pursued a robust trade with the Americas. Nineteenth-century industrial expansion nourished the arts and sciences, ushering in an age known as the Catalan Renaixença (Renaissance). The turn of the century gave birth to the Modernista movement and an all-star list of wildly innovative artists and architects including Picasso, Miró, Dalí, Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner, and Puig i Cadafalch. Despite all of its achievements, it was also the site of merciless persecution under Franco’s dictatorship. Many catalaneses were imprisoned or killed, and dictatorship brought suppression of Catalan language instruction and publications, degrading the very foundation of the population’s identity: its beloved tongue, a Romance language—not a dialect—closely related to Spanish and French. There is no “Spanish” here, only castellano, (literally, “language spoken in Castilla”), a distinction that allows catalaneses to differentiate themselves from a historically dominant culture. Since receiving full autonomy in 1979, Cataluña’s media and arts have flourished; Catalanis once again the official language. After you’ve been to Cataluña, you may understand why many here call it “A Nation of Europe”—it isn’t quite like anywhere else in Spain.