La Franja (; "The Strip"; ) is the area of Catalan-speaking territories of eastern Aragon bordering Catalonia, in Spain. It literally means "the strip" and can also more properly be called (Aragonese Strip), (Western Strip) or (Eastern Strip of Aragon) in Catalan (in , "Eastern Strip of Aragon"; or simply /, "Eastern Strip", or , "Aragonese Strip"; in , "Aragonese Strip").
La Franja is usually considered to be comprised by a part of the municipalities of the following Aragonese administrative comarcas: la Ribagorza/Ribagorça, La Litera/La Llitera, Bajo Cinca/Baix Cinca, Bajo Aragón-Caspe/Baix Aragó-Casp, Bajo Aragón/Baix Aragó and Matarraña/Matarranya.
La Franja has been part of Aragon since the medieval kingdom of Aragon; never in its history has it been part of Catalonia; however its population speaks in Catalan, presumably since the Middle Ages; consequently this territory is considered a part of the so-called Catalan Countries.
Among the territories where Catalan is spoken (Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Andorra and Roussillon, among some other little territories), La Franja is currently the one where oral knowledge of Catalan is the most universal; this is due to low immigration to the area compared to the other ones. Roughly 80% of adults can speak Catalan. In all of Aragon there are 55,513 speakers of Catalan, according to census data.
The thin strip of land is very diverse geographically, ranging from valleys in the Pyrenees to the flat lands by the Ebro; all are included under this umbrella term. La Franja does not have any official political recognition within Aragon, nor is it a separate historical entity in and of itself; the territories only have in common being administratively and historically Aragonese and linguistically Catalan. The term is mostly used in the neighbouring Catalonia, especially by Catalan nationalists, though it has lately become common in Aragon too. Some right-wing political forces in Aragon prefer not to use the word Catalan when speaking of the language of eastern Aragon, and have used a number of alternative names for it, even in the Language Act of Aragon of 2013.
Origin of the names that refer to La Franja The use of a term to refer to the eastern area of Aragon bordering Catalonia as based on linguistic criteria is recent. It was in 1929—when he christened these as Marques de Ponent, "Western Marches"— that Catalan geographer Pau Vila used for the first time a term designating jointly the Aragonese area where Catalan is spoken.
This term was maintained in the second half of the 20th century by Catalan linguists such as Joan Giraldo, along with other terms such as Marques d'Aragó (in Spanish, Marcas de Aragón, "Marches of Aragon"), Catalunya aragonesa (in Spanish, Cataluña aragonesa, "Aragonese Catalonia") or la ratlla d'Aragó (in Spanish, la raya de Aragón, "the Aragonese Strip").
Whichever term is used, they all refer to the eastern Catalan-speaking area of Aragon, which borders western Catalonia. These terms all originated in Catalonia but later became popular in La Franja itself. They are therefore Catalonia-centered and hence the Ponent ("Western") reference in the term La Franja del Ponent, because these areas lie to the west of Catalonia.
The term Franja de Ponent itself first appeared in the second half of the 1970s, during the Spanish transition to democracy:
At the Second International Congress of the Catalan Language (Segon Congrés Internacional de la Llengua Catalana) held in 1985, the normative authority on the Catalan language, known as Institut d'Estudis Catalans, adopted Franja d'Aragó ("Aragonese Strip") as the denomination for the Catalan-speaking territories of Aragon for academic and linguistic purposes, while the denomination Franja de Ponent ("Western Strip") is used mainly in the political arena by some associations, groups and political parties associated with pancatalanism.
Later on, alternative denominations such as Aragón Oriental (in Catalan, Aragó Oriental), Franja Oriental or Franja de Levante (in Catalan, Franja de Llevant), all meaning roughly Eastern Aragon or Eastern Strip were created in Aragon.
Diverse meanings While the term was created to designate a linguistic area, there are other issues in question:
The ecclesiastical sense The linguistic sense The political sense The socioeconomic sense
Ecclesiastical sense Many parishes of what is now called la Franja had been historically part of the Diocese of Lleida, along with other, non-Catalan-speaking Aragonese towns. In 1995, Catholic church authorities, through the Papal Nuncio to Spain, informed the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference –Archbishop of Saragossa, Elías Yanes– of the decision of the Holy See to align the diocesan boundaries with the political and historical ones.
This meant that 111 parishes and a population of 68,089 were transferred from the Diocese of Lleida to the enlarged Diocese of Barbastro, whose name was then changed to Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón As for the reasons of the transfer, some Catalan ecclesiastical ranks considered that it was a result of the opposition of these Aragonese parishes to a short-lived debate on the convenience of creating a distinct Catalan Episcopal Conference, which would have been detached from the Spanish one. Other sources claim that the diocese of Barbastro—birthplace of the founder of Opus Dei, Josepmaria Escrivà de Balaguer—was losing population and needed to acquire neighbouring parishes from another diocese to be able to continue to exist.
The transfer of the parishes, specifically the ownership of the medieval artistic objects or sacred art comprised, originated an intricate series of lawsuits involving both dioceses (Barbastro-Monzón and Lleida), both autonomous governments (Aragón and Catalonia) and both legal systems canon and administrative law.
It was finally decided by the ecclesiastic canon judges in 2005 that the 113 works of art belong to the Barbastro-Monzón diocese. The Lleida diocese released a statement accepting this decision but, at the same time, announced that then the administrative process would be opened, later on, it stated that talks should be opened to reach an agreement, in the end effectively protracting the end of the dispute. In the meantime, the works of art remain located in the Diocese Museum of Lleida. The lawsuit is known as the conflicto del patrimonio eclesiástico de la Franja (the conflict of the ecclesiastical heritage of the Franja) or del Aragón Oriental (of Eastern Aragon), and though it began as a local debate, it has become a national press story, especially due to the confrontation between the political forces of Aragon and Catalonia.
On July 1, 2008 an agreement between the two dioceses was announced, again stating that the art pieces would return to the Barbastro-Monzón diocese. However, the situation remained stalled due to the continued refusal of the Catalan administration to issue an exit permit, something which eventually led to the Aragonese region president to open a criminal procedure in February 2009, thus effectively giving up on the resolved yet stalled civil procedure. Then the Vatican itself urged the return of the pieces to Aragon, to no avail.
Linguistic sense The Catalan language is spoken by a significant proportion of the population of La Franja (47.1% of the population uses it as their usual language according to a survey by the Aragonese Institute of Statistics in 2013; percentage that rises to 73.6%–90% according to two surveys carried out with a smaller territorial scope also in 2013 by the Generalitat of Catalonia)Statistics about languages in Catalan-Speaking Aragon Generalitat de Catalunya This despite the fact that it is not an official language and has a very limited presence in education (where it is only available as an elective) and in administration and or public acts, resulting in severe deficiencies in writing skills of this language.
Territorial basis The exact territorial limits of the Franja de Aragón differ depending on the source, since there are some municipalities of Ribagorza where there are doubts over whether or not to include them as Catalan-speaking or as Aragonese-speaking. The proportion of speakers of the two languages varies over time and with immigration according to the municipality, something which leads to different sources drawing slightly different linguistic borders.
According to the draft of the Aragonese Language Law During the fourth session of the Cortes de Aragón (the parliament of Aragon) (1995–1999) under the PP-PAR coalition government the Special Commission Report on the Language Policy of Aragon was published. The report would be the basis for the Draft of the Language Law of Aragon published the following session (1999–2003) under the PSOE-PAR coalition, where for the first time from the Cortes de Aragón would detail those municipalities which formed part of a Catalan-speaking community, with the aim of recognising co-officiality and encouraging the use of Catalan in public life and especially in education.
The law was never approved due to protests and petitions in Aragon opposed to the co-officiality of Catalan, promoted mainly by the Federación de Asociaciones Culturales del Aragón Oriental (FACAO), a conservative organisation which maintained that the local 'linguistic modalities' were languages and not dialects of Catalan, and there was lack of consensus on the issue among the Aragonese political parties. There are other civic associations staunchly rejecting the Catalan affiliation of the language
According to the list of municipalities which could be considered to be areas of predominant use of its own language or linguistic modality or areas of predominant use of normalised Catalan in the Second annex of the Second Final Disposition of the Avant-project of the Language Law, La Franja would be composed of: