The History of the Catalan Language

Catalan is part of the vast linguistic diversity heard across the world today, comprising approximately 6,000 languages. Currently spoken by over ten million people, the history of the Catalan language as a spoken tongue dates back to the 8th and 9th centuries. However, the earliest known texts in Catalan did not appear until the 12th century.

One such example is the Liber iudiciorum, from the mid-12th century, which focused on translating a Visigothic legal code into Catalan. Another notable text is the Homilies d’Organyà, from the latter part of the same century. This is the earliest known prose text written directly in Catalan and consists of a commentary—much like a sermon—on passages from the New Testament, originally written in Latin. The text was part of a codex discovered in the Alt Urgell region.

Today, it is preserved in the Library of Catalonia and consists of 13 parchment folios. Unlike other Romance languages such as Italian, French, or Spanish, the earliest works in Catalan literature were written in prose, as poetry was composed in Occitan. Catalan was the language of a major Mediterranean power: the Crown of Aragon. Through this political entity, Catalan spread during the medieval period to regions such as Mallorca, Sardinia, Valencia, Naples, Greece, and Sicily. A prominent figure from this period is Ramon Muntaner (1265–1336), whose Chronicle, conceived as a literary monument, covers the reigns from James I to Alfonso IV. However, it is in the 14th and 15th centuries that Catalan literature reaches a peak of splendour across Europe. Especially noteworthy is Ramon Llull, considered the patriarch of Catalan poetry and the father of its prose.

Thanks to this Majorcan intellectual, Catalan began to be used to express ideas from all branches of knowledge, both philosophical and scientific. His body of work includes more than 250 writings in Catalan and Latin. This golden age, initiated by Ramon Llull, continued throughout the 15th century with figures like Ausiàs March and the chivalric novel Tirant lo Blanc. This period represents a clear transitional phase between the medieval world and the Renaissance.

The Catalan language had reached a high level of maturity, while culturally it was experiencing a period of flourishing that would not be seen again for another four centuries. It was during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries that a decline in scholarly literary production occurred, though Catalan continued to be spoken. This decline stemmed from various causes, including the union of Castile and Aragon, the adoption of Castilian by intellectuals such as Juan Luis Vives, and the establishment of institutions such as the Royal Academy.

A crucial factor in this decline was the weakening of the Royal Chancery, which had been responsible for drafting official documents on behalf of the kings of the Crown of Aragon. Established in the 12th century and modernised in the 14th by Peter the Ceremonious, the Chancery played a key role in the unification of written language. It also managed the transcription of classical texts, both Latin and Greek.

Further contributing to the decline of Catalan was the growing dominance of Latin—Europe’s cultural and scientific lingua franca during the Renaissance—and of Castilian, which became the language of the Spanish monarchy and of the entire Spanish Golden Age.

The invention of the printing press only deepened this crisis. Yet, it is worth noting that the first book ever printed on the Iberian Peninsula was Les trobes en llaors de la Verge Maria, published in Valencia in 1474. The reigns of the Castilian dynasties of the Trastámaras and the Bourbons marked a growing replacement of Catalan by Castilian in official and literary uses. The Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, led to the cession of Roussillon to King Louis XIV of France, initiating the fragmentation of Catalan-speaking territories. From that point onward, French was imposed in Northern Catalonia, and the use of Catalan was actively repressed. A similar situation would later unfold south of the Pyrenees under the Decree of Nueva Planta.

This decree aimed to abolish all Catalan political institutions. Imposed by the Bourbon king Philip V, it effectively halted the natural evolution of the Catalan language—an evolution still enjoyed by other neighbouring tongues. Catalan began to be persecuted, its suppression manifesting in the closure of Catalan universities and the founding of a new university in Cervera where only Castilian was spoken. Nevertheless, a revival emerged thanks to the Romantic movement and, in particular, the rise of nationalism.

This period, known as the Renaixença, saw even the publication of newspapers written exclusively in Catalan. A key instrument in achieving this cultural resurgence was the reestablishment of the Jocs Florals (Floral Games), a literary competition that, over the course of two decades, succeeded in centralising much of the Renaixença’s cultural and literary efforts.

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

The Civil War, along with the Francoist dictatorship, marked a period of regression for the Catalan language, during which translations from Catalan became virtually non-existent. In the early years, the use of Catalan was outright prohibited, and only Castilian Spanish was permitted in public spaces as well as in official domains—that is, in politics, government administration, and the limited number of publications that did exist, which were subject to intense censorship. Many Catalan intellectuals were executed, imprisoned, or forced into exile, having found no other viable option. Catalan survived only within the private sphere of family life—a situation made worse by migratory flows from other regions of Spain, whose inhabitants often saw no need to learn or use the Catalan language. It was not until the advent of democracy that the 1978 Constitution officially recognised the co-official status of Catalan.

Origins of Catalan

The origins of Catalan lie in Latin, making it a Romance language, like Spanish, Italian, Galician, or French. However, this was not Classical Latin, the formal written variety, but rather Vulgar Latin—the spoken form from which all Romance languages are derived. That said, some terms of Classical origin have also been preserved. In essence, what are known as "heritage terms" have endured from Vulgar Latin, though with phonetic changes over time, while scholarly or learned terms stem from Classical Latin and have undergone relatively little modification. Hellenisms also played a role in shaping Catalan vocabulary, and to a lesser extent, so did various pre-Roman languages such as Phoenician, Celtic, and Iberian-Basque, as well as Arabic and Germanic tongues. Additionally, neighboring languages like Occitan, Italian, Spanish, French, and even English have had an influence.

Geographic Spread of Catalan

El catalán se extiende por un total de cuatro estados pertenecientes a Europa: España (Cataluña, Islas Baleares, País Valenciano, Franja de Poniente, es decir, Huesca, Zaragoza y Teruel, así como el Carche, limítrofe con Murcia). También se extiende por Andorra, donde es la lengua oficial, y Francia. En este último país impera el catalán en Cataluña Norte: El Rosellón, la Cerdaña, el Vallespir, la Fenolleda y el Conflent. Por último, también se habla en Italia, concretamente en la ciudad del Alguer, en la isla de Cerdeña. Es la lengua minoritaria de mayor importancia de toda Europa occidental. Finally, Catalan is also spoken in Italy—in the city of Alghero, on the island of Sardinia. It is the most significant minority language in all of Western Europe.

Catalan is believed to have originated in a region of the Pyrenees between Empordà and Andorra. From there, it gradually spread through the development of the Catalan counties, the Christian reconquest, and maritime expansion.

The Language d’Oc

When discussing the Catalan language, one cannot overlook the case of the Langue d’Oc, spoken in Occitania. Occitan is a Romance language of Europe, widely spoken across the French Midi, or southern France. It is also present in a small territory in the Aran Valley, in Catalonia—the only place where it is officially recognized alongside Catalan and Spanish. Additionally, it is spoken in the Occitan Valleys of Piedmont, Italy. Etymologically, many scholars trace Occitan back to Medieval Occitan. Today, it is spoken by approximately eight million people and understood by around seven million more. However, according to UNESCO’s Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Occitan is at risk of extinction. Some linguists consider it less a single language than a closely related family of dialects. Within this family, one might include Gascon, Bigorrese, and Limousin.