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| Salvador Dalí · Josep Carreras · Pau Casals · Mercè Rodoreda · Josep Pla · Francesc Pi i Margall · Antoni Gaudí · Jacint Verdaguer · Carles Puyol · Quim Monzó · Joan Miró · Montserrat Caballé | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ca. 8 million | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Catalan (native); Spanish and French (as a result of immigration or language shift) |
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The Catalans are a cultural group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia who form a historic nationality chiefly located in northern Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France (known in Catalonia proper as Catalunya Nord, and in France as the Pays Catalan) are included in this definition. Also, Catalan is sometimes used to define people from Catalan Countries, which include other areas where the Catalan language is spoken.
The other Catalan-speaking people, namely Andorrans, Valencians, Balearics, some Aragonese, and Alguerese are sometimes identified as a distinct cultural group by certain nationalists. The latter assertion is especially rooted in Catalan nationalism.
In the aforementioned territories (often designated Països Catalans, "Catalan Countries", by Catalan nationalists). This extended concept is controversial in those territories and eventually brings conflict, most of all in the Valencian Community where it is a great issue involving discrimination of the language and media manipulation.
The area that now is known primarily as Catalonia, was invaded in 1500 BCE by Proto-Celtic Urnfield people who brought the rite of burning the dead. These Indo-European people were absorbed by the Iberians beginning in 600 BCE in a process that would not complete until the fourth century BCE. These groups came under the rule of various invading groups starting with the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, who set up colonies along the coast, including Barcino (present-day Barcelona) itself. Following the Punic Wars, the Romans replaced the Carthaginians as the dominant power in Catalonia by 206 BCE. Rome established Latin as the official language and imparted a distinctly Roman culture upon the local population, which merged with Roman colonists from the Italian peninsula. An early precursor to the Catalan language began to develop from a local form of popular Latin before and during the collapse of the Roman Empire. Various Germanic tribes arrived following nearly six centuries of Roman rule, which had completely transformed the area into the Roman province of Tarraconensis. The Visigoths established themselves in the fifth century and would rule the area until 718 when Muslim Arabs and Berbers conquered the region and held it for close to a century. The Franks held back small Muslim raiding parties, which had penetrated virtually unchallenged as far as central France; Frankish suzerainty extended over much of present-day Catalonia. Larger wars with the Muslims began with the Spanish March which led to the beginnings of the reconquista (reconquest) by Catalan forces over most of Catalonia by the year 801. Barcelona became an important center for Christian forces in the Iberian peninsula.
Catalonia emerged from the conflicts in Muslim Spain as a regional power, as Christian rulers entrenched themselves in the region during the Carolingian period. Rulers such as Wilfred the Hairy became masters of a larger territory encompassing Catalonia. The Crown of Aragon included Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands. The marriage of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon and the conquest of the last Muslim kingdom of Granada in 1492 tied Catalonia politically to the fate of the new Spanish kingdom, while a regional culture continued to survive and thrive.
Some sporadic regional unrest led to conflicts such as the Revolt of the Germanies in Valencia and Majorca, and the 1640 revolt in Catalonia known as the Reapers' War. This latter conflict embroiled Spain in a larger war with France as many Catalan nobles allied themselves with Louis XIII. The war continued until 1659 and ended with the Peace of the Pyrenees, which effectively partitioned Catalonia as the northern strip of the March came under French rule, while the rest remained under Spanish hegemony. The Catalan government took sides with the Habsburg pretender against the Bourbon one during the War of the Spanish Succession that started in 1705 and ended in 1714. The Catalan failure to defend the perpetuation of Habsburg dynasty in Spain culminated in the surrender of Barcelona on September 11, 1714, which came to be commemorated as Catalonia's national day.
During the Napoleonic Wars, much of Catalonia was seized by French forces by 1808, as France ruled the entire region briefly until Napoleon's surrender to Allied Armies. In France, strong assimilationist policies integrated many Catalans into French society, while in Spain a Catalan identity was increasingly suppressed in favor of a national identity. The Catalans regained autonomy during the Spanish Second Republic from 1932 until Francisco Franco's nationalist forces retook Catalonia by 1939. It was not until 1975 and the death of Franco that the Catalans began to regain their right to cultural expression, which was restarted by the Spanish Constitution of 1978. Since this period, a balance between a sense of local identity versus the broader Spanish one has emerged as the dominant political force in Catalonia. The former tends to advocate for even greater autonomy and independence; the latter tends to argue for maintaining the status quo. As a result, there tends to be much fluctuation depending on regional and national politics during a given election cycle. Given the stronger centralist tendencies in France, however, French Catalans display a much less dynamic sense of uniqueness, having been integrated more consistently into the unitary French national identity.
The vast majority of Catalans reside in the autonomous community of Catalonia, within Spain. At least 100,000 Catalan speakers live in the pays catalan in France. An indeterminate number of Catalans emigrated to other countries during the Spanish colonial period and in the years following the Spanish Civil War.
Described by author Walter Starkie in The Road to Santiago as a subtle people, he sums up their national character with a local term seny meaning "common sense" or a pragmatic attitude toward life. The masia or mas is a defining characteristic of the Catalan countryside and includes a large house, land, cattle, and an extended family, but this tradition is in decline as the nuclear family has largely replaced the extended family, as in the rest of western Europe. Catalans in Spain are recognised as a "nationality" and enjoy a high degree of political autonomy, leading to reinforcement of a Catalan identity.
The Catalan language is a Romance language. It is the language closest to Occitan, as well as sharing many features with other Western Romance languages such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Aragonese. There are a number of linguistic varieties that are considered dialects of Catalan; among them, the dialect group with the most speakers, Central Catalan.
The number of Catalan speakers is more than 7 million, but very few Catalan monoglots exist; basically, virtually all of the Catalan speakers in Spain are bilingual speakers of Catalan and Spanish, with a sizeable population of Spanish-only speakers of immigrant origin (typically born outside Catalonia or with both parents born outside Catalonia) existing in the major Catalan urban areas as well. In the Roussillon, nowadays only a minority of the French Catalans do speak Catalan, with French being the majority language for the inhabitants after a continued process of language shift.
The inhabitants of the Aran valley count Aranese –an Occitan dialect– rather than Catalan as their own language. These Catalans are also bilingual in Spanish.
In September 2005, the .cat TLD, the first Internet language-based top-level domain, was approved for all web pages intending to serve the needs of the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. This community is made up of those who use the Catalan language for their online communications or promote the different aspects of Catalan culture online.
The traditional dress (now, practically only used in folkloric celebrations) included the barretina (a sort of woollen, long cap usually red or purple color) and the faixa (a sort of wide belt) among men, and ret (a fine net bag to contain hair) among women. The traditional footwear was the espardenya or espadrille.
The Catalan diet is part of the Mediterranean diet and includes the use of olive oil. Catalan people like to eat veal (vedella) and lamb (xai).
There are three main daily meals:
In Catalan gastronomy, embotits (a wide variety of Catalan sausages and cold meats) are very important; these are pork sausages such as botifarra or fuet. In the past, bread (similar to French bread) figured heavily in the Catalan diet; now it is used mainly in the morning (second breakfast, especially among young students and some workers) and supplements the noon meal, at home and in restaurants. Bread is still popular among Catalans; some Catalan fast-food restaurants don't serve hamburgers, but offer a wide variety of sandwiches.
In the past, the poor ate soup every day and rice on Thursday and Sunday.
The discipline of abstinence, not eating meat during Lent, once was very strong, but practically disappeared in the twentieth century.
Spicy food is rare in the Catalan diet, but there are quite garlicky sauces such as allioli or romesco.
One type of Catalan dish is escudella, a soup which contains chick peas, potatoes, and vegetables such as green cabbage, celery, carrots, turnips, and meats such as botifarra (a Catalan sausage), pork feet, salted ham, chicken, and veal. In Northern Catalonia, it is sometimes called ollada.
Other Catalan dishes are calçots (similar to leeks and often eaten with a romesco sauce) and escalivada.
Catalan music has one of the oldest documented musical traditions in Europe.
The majority of Catalans are of the Roman Catholic tradition.
Catalonia is one of the richest and most well developed regions in Southern Europe. Barcelona is among the most industrialized metropolises and is both a regional capital and a magnet for various migrants from other regions in Spain, as well as from foreign countries.
Due to the continued identification with a distinct identity, many Catalans support Catalan nationalism or Catalan independentism in Spain. This is only seen to a much lesser extent in France.
Catalan : individual from a people, of Catalan language, developed in the Catalan Countries.
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