The Catalonia complexity
The region that is a bit France, a bit Catalonia
It might look like the Pyrenees-orientales has an identity crisis, torn between being French and Catalan, but in reality it’s more a crisis of understanding for visitors, albeit one made more complicated by recent events.
The department broadly corresponds to the old territory of Northern or French Catalonia, which was once part of Spain but was handed over to France in 1659 at the end of the Franco-spanish war.
The Spanish political crisis of Catalan separatism, which peaked in 2017 with an attempted referendum declared illegal by the government, has echoed across the border and there is a small but highly vocal minority campaigning for Northern and Southern Catalonia to be united and independent. The prevalence of Catalonian iconography and language easily gives visitors the impression that this opinion is far more commonly held than is the case.
Whether or not wealthy Spanish Catalunya would want the considerably less affluent French Catalonia to join it is a question that never quite gets answered. What’s clear is that this part of France strongly identifies as Catalonian and French, and that the regional and national identities can co-exist.