There are four languages with official status in Catalonia (an autonomous community of Spain): Catalan; Spanish, which is official throughout Spain; Aranese, a dialect of Occitan spoken in the Aran Valley; and Catalan Sign Language.Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (2006) , Article 50, paragraph 6. Retrieved 2012-08-24. "The public authorities shall guarantee the use of Catalan sign language and conditions of equality for deaf people who chooses to use this language, which shall be the subject of education, protection and respect." Many other languages are spoken in Catalonia as a result of recent immigration from all over the world.
Catalan has enjoyed special status since the approval of the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 which declares it to be the language "proper to Catalonia". Spanish had been the only official language for most of the period between the 18th century and 1975.
Social use First habitual language, 2018 Demographic SurveyLanguageIdentification languageHabitual languageSpanish2 978 000 (46.6%)3 104 000 (48.6%)Catalan2 320 000 (36.3%)2 305 000 (36.1%)Both languages440 000 (6.9%)474 000 (7.4%)Other languages651 000 (10.2%)504 000 (7.9%)Arabic114 000 (1.8%)61 000 (0.9%)Romanian58 000 (0.9%)24 000 (0.4%)English29 000 (0.5%)26 000 (0.4%)French26 000 (0.4%)16 000 (0.2%)Berber25 000 (0.4%)20 000 (0.3%)Chinese20 000 (0.3%)18 000 (0.3%)Other languages281 000 (4.4%)153 000 (2.4%)Other combinations96 000 (1.5%)193 000 (3.0%)Total population 15 year old and over 6 386 000 (100.0%)6 386 000 (100.0%) According to a 2008 survey, in everyday use, 45.9% of the population usually spoke Spanish, while 35.6% usually employed Catalan, and 12% of the population used either language habitually.
Over 45% of respondents used Spanish to address their parents (versus 36% who choose Catalan). This is attributed to extensive migration from other areas in Spain during the second half of the 20th century, as a consequence of which many Catalans have one or both parents born outside Catalonia. However, a majority (52.6%) used Catalan with their children (compared to 42.3% for Spanish). This can be attributed to some Spanish-speaking citizens shifting from their native language to Catalan at home.
Outside the family, 48.6% of the population indicated that they addressed strangers exclusively or preferentially in Catalan, while the proportion of those who used Spanish was 41.7%, and 8.6% claimed to use both equally.
Social origin of the language diversity The main cause of Spanish and Catalan social bilingualism in modern Catalonia was large-scale migration from the rest of Spain during the 20th century, as Catalonia started a significant industrialization which demanded an increased workforce from elsewhere. "While the repressive policy of the central authorities had an undeniably negative impact on Catalan use and even on Catalan competence (e.g. an entire generation went through school without any opportunity to acquire or polish Catalan literacy, a limitation that has very recognizable consequences to this very day among most older Catalans), an indirect development of those same years has had even more massive and more devastating consequences for the language. Catalonia had long been one of the most economically advanced areas of Spain and, as a result, its cities (most particularly Barcelona) had long attracted unemployed Spaniards from the rest of the country. These immigrants came in numbers that did not demographically swamp the indigenous (or indigenized) Catalans, and within a generation or more the latest newcomers too were recurringly Catalanized. [...] However, the immigration that transpired between 1950 and 1975 was so huge, relative to Catalonia's absorptive capacity, that the rather effortless and rapid ethnolinguistic transformation of its members that had formerly been the rule was no longer possible.
The economic consequences of the rapid addition of nearly one and a half million unskilled immigrants to the previous two and a half million 'native Catalans' were not seriously problematic ones for the host population. [...] However, the cultural and intercultural consequences became doubly problematic as social class differences compounded the ethnolinguistic differences separating the two populations. Even now, decades after the end of massive immigration (an immigration that would have been even larger had not whole trainloads of newcomers been turned back prior to their arrival) only slightly more than half of the adult population of Catalonia habitually speaks Catalan, a percentage which is halved again in the immigrant 'industrial belt' surrounding Barcelona where Spanish-speaking newcomers and their children, many of the latter born in Catalonia, are overwhelmingly concentrated." Spanish has historically been spoken among a minority of civil servants born in other regions in Spain and among segments of the wealthiest bourgeoisie. Spanish has also been spoken as a second language by most Catalans, as it has been the only official language over long periods since the eighteenth century.
It has been calculated that the total population of Catalonia with no migration would have grown from 2 million people in 1900 to just 2.4 million in 1980,Anna Cabré: Immigration and welfare state (in Catalan) Ced.uab.es (PDF) 39% of the real population of 6.1 million for that date, which was over 7.5 million in 2016. As a consequence, there exists a somewhat different identity for those whose native language is Catalan and those whose native language is Spanish,"...una societat que, en encetar-se el procés, es trobava escindida entre la població d’origen autòcton, de primera llengua catalana quasi sense excepcions, i la d’origen immigrant, molt majoritàriament monolingüe hispanòfona." (translation: a society that, when the process [of schooling in Catalan language] began, was divided between a native population, with Catalan as first language almost without exceptions, and one of immigrant origin, with a large majority of Spanish-only speakers). https://web.archive.org/web/20091027054000/http://www.geocities.com/m_strubell/060908_frankfurt4.doc De llengua oprimida a centre de gravetat. L’"admirable inversió" del català a les escoles de Catalunya (in Catalan)] though it has been increasingly difficult to delineate the two groups; furthermore, there is a small but growing number of Catalans who consider both to be their mother tongue."I és que els dos grups lingüístics majoritaris són avui força més permeables que 30 anys enrere: hi ha més gents capaç de parlar les dues llengües, i també han crescut els sectors socials intermedis (bilingües familiars, bilingües d’identificació, etc.) i les pràctiques bilingües, sobretot entre els més joves". (translation: ... The two majority linguistic groups are today quite more permeating than 30 years ago: there is more people capable of speaking both languages, in addition the intermediate social sectors (family bilinguals, identification bilinguals, etc.) and bilingual practices have increased, especially among the youngest.) De llengua oprimida a centre de gravetat. L’"admirable inversió" del català a les escoles de Catalunya (in Catalan) According to anthropologist Kathryn Woolard, who has studied these identities, Catalans tend to classify anyone as either castellà (that is, having Spanish as their native language) or català (that is, having Catalan as their native language). The claim that the population would have only increased 20% from 1900 to 1980 is disputable since the population of Spain as a whole doubled from 18 to 37 million even allowing for high levels of emigration from the province to the Western Hemisphere and Europe.
Statistics
According to the linguistic census elaborated by the Government of Catalonia corresponding to 2008, 45.92% of citizens over 15 years old declared Spanish as their [only] habitual language of use, versus 35.64% for Catalan, with 11.95% of complete bilinguals; a larger number claims Catalan as "their own language" (37.25% Catalan compared to 46.53% Spanish and 8.81% bilinguals).
Lastly, since the Statute of Autonomy of 1979, Aranese—a Gascon Occitan dialect—has been official and subject to special protection in the Aran Valley. This small area of 7,000 inhabitants was the only place where Occitan (spoken mainly in France and some Italian valleys) received full official status. However, on 9 August 2006, when the new Statute came into force, Aranese became official throughout Catalonia.
Spanish
According to the government of Catalonia, Spanish, locally known as Castilian, is currently the most spoken language in Catalonia (45.9% daily users of Spanish vs. 35.6% daily users of Catalan vs. 11% daily users of both Spanish and Catalan) and especially in the Barcelona metropolitan area, as well as native language and usual language of many Catalan citizens. This language is widely prevalent in the press, cinema and in daily life.
Spanish is the language that Catalan citizens can read and write the most, due to the fact that until the 1980s it was the only language used in school and in all official communications.
The Spanish language in Catalonia (2009) Knowledge Individuals Percentage Can understand 6,973,500 99% Can speak 6,793,900 96.4% Can read 6,440,300 91.4% Can write 6,258,200 88.8% Population over 2 years old 7,049,900 --
The Spanish language developed from Vulgar Latin in the North of the Iberian Peninsula, expanding quickly to the South. It has lexical influences from Arabic and possible substrate influences from Basque and (to a lesser extent) Celtiberian. It has been the only official language in Spain for most periods since the eighteenth century.
Catalan
According to the official government of Catalonia, Catalan is the second most spoken language of the region, after Spanish (over 35% of Catalans use exclusively Catalan as their first language, while 11% of Catalans use equally both Catalan and Spanish). It is the most spoken language in many comarques of Catalonia, with the exception of the Barcelona metropolitan area (Barcelonès plus surrounding comarques) and Camp de Tarragona. Catalan is a compulsory subject in schools and enjoys equals rights with Spanish throughout Catalonia.
Since the death of Franco (1975) and the approval of a new democratic Constitution in Spain, Catalan has experienced a new revival in its usage, first, due to the liberalisation and devolution of the Catalan linguistic and cultural institutions, and second, to their promotion. However, some political activists claim that Catalan-speaking people continue suffering some types of discrimination, as explained in the European Parliament on January 29, 2014.
Catalan, a Romance language, is regarded by some Iberian linguists as belonging to the Iberian Romance sub-family (which also includes Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, and Aragonese), while others (especially Occitanists) classify it within the Gallo-Romance sub-family (which includes French, Occitan and Gallo-Italian) languages. It shares attributes with both linguistic groups.
Literacy According to the 2018 Linguistic Census, about 6,030,000 people in Catalonia (over 94% of the population) understand the Catalan language. The percentage of people aged fifteen and older who can speak, read and write Catalan is as follows:
Knowledge of Catalan (Total population: 6,385,613) Ability Individuals Percentage Understands 6,028,019 94.4% Speaks 5,187,117 85.5% Reads 5,463,121 81.2% Writes 4,170,454 65.3%
As a result of the ongoing linguistic policies favouring Catalan, implemented in various degrees by the autonomous government during the last 30 years, knowledge of Catalan has advanced significantly in all these areas, with the ability to write it having experienced the most pronounced increase, from 31.6% of the population in 1986 to 65.3% in 2018.