Catalan Countries - Component Territories

Component Territories

Catalan is spoken in:

• the Spanish autonomous communities of
  • Catalonia — even though in the comarca of Val d'Aran, Occitan is considered the language proper to that territory;
  • Aragon, in a Catalan-speaking area named "La Franja" ("The Strip");
  • the Balearic Islands and
  • as Valencian, in the Valencian Community, with the exception of some western and southern comarques where Spanish is the only language spoken;
    • Carche, a small Valencian-speaking area in the Spanish autonomous community of Murcia;

• Andorra, a European sovereign state where Catalan is the national and only official language.

• most of the French department of the Pyrénées-Orientales, also called Le Pays Catalan (The Catalan Country) in French or Catalunya (del) Nord (Northern Catalonia) in Catalan;

• the Italian city of Alghero, in the island of Sardinia, where a variant of Catalan is spoken.

Catalan is the official language of Andorra, co-official with Spanish and Occitan in Catalonia, co-official with Spanish in the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community —with the denomination of Valencian in the latter— and co-official with Italian in the city of Alghero. It is also part of the recognized minority languages of Italy along with Sardinian, also spoken in Alghero.

It is not official in Aragon, Murcia or the Pyrénées-Orientales, even though on 10 December 2007 the General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales officially recognized Catalan, along with French, as a language of the department. In 2009, the Catalan language was declarated llengua pròpia (with Aragonese language) of Aragon.