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Catalans

European Peoples

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The Catalans are an ethnic and linguistic group native to Catalonia in northeastern Spain, speaking Catalan, a Romance language also spoken in Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Andorra (where it is the sole official language) and parts of southern France. Catalonia holds significant devolved political autonomy within Spain, and the Catalan independence movement, culminating in a disputed October 2017 independence referendum that Spain's constitutional court ruled illegal and the ensuing Catalan government's brief and unrecognized declaration of independence, remains an active, extensively documented and unresolved political conflict within Spain. Catalan cultural identity is expressed through documented traditions including the collective folk dance the sardana and the human-tower (castells) building tradition recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.

Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own account
Ethnic/national group 1
Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own account
Western Europe (Catalonia and Valencia in Spain, and the Roussillon region of France, and Andorra) 1
Population EstimateSourced to the subject's own account
approximately 7.5 million in Catalonia, with several million further Catalan speakers in Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Andorra 1
Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own account
Catalan (a Romance language) 1
Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own account
Historically Mediterranean agriculture (viticulture and olive cultivation) and a long-documented mercantile and, from the nineteenth century, industrial economy centered on Barcelona. 1
Sources
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