Catalonia in the context of "Catalan Countries"

Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees in Southwestern Europe, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is currently headed by two co-princes: the Bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain, and the president of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.

Andorra is the sixth-smallest state in Europe, with an area of 468 square kilometres (181 sq mi) and a population of approximately 87,486. The Andorran people are a Romance ethnic group closely related to Catalans. Andorra is the world's 16th-smallest country by land and 11th-smallest by population. Its capital, Andorra la Vella, is the highest capital city in Europe, at an elevation of 1,023 metres (3,356 feet) above sea level. The official language is Catalan, but Spanish, Portuguese, and French are also commonly spoken.

Llívia (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈʎiβiə]; Spanish: Llivia Spanish: [ˈʎiβja] ) is a town in the comarca of Cerdanya, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. It is a Spanish exclave surrounded by the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales. It is named after Livia, the wife of Augustus and matriarch of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Because of a technicality in the Treaty of the Pyrenees, signed in 1659, that transferred only "villages" in the Pyrenees to France, Llívia, which was a "town", remains under Spanish control. The Segre river, a tributary of the Spanish Ebro, flows through Llívia. It has a population of 1,560 (register office, 2024) .

Llívia is separated from the rest of Spain by a corridor approximately 1.6 km (1.0 mile) wide, which includes the French communes of Ur and Bourg-Madame. This corridor is traversed by a road, owned by both France (where it is part of Route nationale 20 and RD68) and Spain (where it is part of N-154). Before the implementation of the Schengen Area in 1995, it was considered a "neutral road", a custom-free route with access for both French and Spanish people; since 1995, there have been no formal borders. The two countries share a hospital in Puigcerdà (which lies close to Llívia), as well as other local initiatives.

Phocaea or Phokaia (Ancient Greek: Φώκαια, Phókaia; modern-day Foça in Turkey) was an ancient Ionian Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia. Greek colonists from Phocaea founded the colony of Massalia (modern-day Marseille, in France) in 600 BC, Emporion (modern-day Empúries, in Catalonia, Spain) in 575 BC and Elea (modern-day Velia, in Campania, Italy) in 540 BC.

The Ligures (Latin sg. Ligus; also Ligustici or Ligustini) or in English Ligurians, were an ancient people after whom Liguria, a region of present-day north-western Italy, is named. Because of the strong Celtic influences on their language and culture, they were also known in antiquity as Celto-Ligures and hence in English as Celto-Ligurians.

In pre-Roman times, the Ligurians occupied the present-day Italian region of Liguria, Piedmont, northern Tuscany, western Lombardy, western Emilia-Romagna, and northern Sardinia, reaching also Elba and Sicily. They inhabited also the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and Corsica; however, it is generally believed that around 2000 BC the Ligurians occupied a much larger area, extending as far as what is today Catalonia (in the north-eastern corner of the Iberian Peninsula).

The langues d'oïl  are a dialect continuum that includes standard French and its closest relatives historically spoken in the northern half of France, southern Belgium, and the Channel Islands. They belong to the larger category of Gallo-Romance languages, which also include the historical languages of east-central France and western Switzerland, southern France, portions of northern Italy, the Val d'Aran in Spain, and under certain acceptations those of Catalonia.

Linguists divide the Romance languages of France, and especially of Medieval France, into two main geographical subgroups: the langues d'oïl to the north, and the langues d'oc in the southern half of France. Both groups are named after the word for yes in their recent ancestral languages. The most common modern langue d'oïl is standard French, in which the ancestral oïl has become oui.

The Diocese of Urgell (Catalan pronunciation: [uɾˈ(d)ʒeʎ]; Latin: Diœcesis Urgellensis) is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Catalonia (Spain) and the Principality of Andorra in the historical County of Urgell, with origins in the 5th century AD or possibly earlier. It is based in the region of the historical Catalan County of Urgell, though it has different borders. The seat and cathedral of the bishop are situated in la Seu d'Urgell town. The state of Andorra is a part of this diocese.

Among its most notable events are Bishop Felix's adoptionist revolt, the coup of Bishop Esclua, and the overthrowing of the bishop by members of aristocratic families (namely Salla i Ermengol del Conflent, Eribau i Folcs dels Cardona, Guillem Guifré de Cerdanya and Ot de Pallars) between the years 981 and 1122.

Catalans (Catalan, French and Occitan: catalans; Spanish: catalanes; Italian: catalani; Sardinian: cadelanos or catalanos) are a Romance-speaking ethnic group native to Catalonia, who speak Catalan. The current official category of "Catalans" is that of the citizens of Catalonia, a nationality and autonomous community in Spain and the inhabitants of the Roussillon historical region in Southern France, today the Pyrénées Orientales department, also called Northern Catalonia and Pays Catalan in French.

Some authors also extend the word "Catalans" to include all people from areas in which Catalan is spoken, namely those from Andorra, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, eastern Aragon, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia.

Catalan (català) is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra and the official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, where it is called Valencian (valencià). It has semi-official status in the Italian municipality of Alghero, and it is spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking territories are often called the Països Catalans or "Catalan Countries".

The language evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees. It became the language of the Principality of Catalonia and the kingdoms of Valencia and Mallorca, being present throughout the Mediterranean as the main language of the Crown of Aragon. It was replaced by Spanish as a language of government and literature in the 1700s, but nineteenth century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, culminating in the early 1900s. With the end of Franco dictatorship (1975) and its repressive measures against the language, Catalan entered a relatively successful process of re-normalization between the 1980s and the 2000s. However, during the 2010s, it experienced signs of decline in social use, diglossia and the re-growth of discrimination cases.