A growing population thanks to immigration
With over 8.11 million inhabitants at the end of 2024, Catalonia has recorded a further increase in population (+ 1.5% compared to 2023). This continues the trend of recent years. With a slight novelty, it is now immigration from foreign countries that guarantees this demographic growth. In recent years, immigration from other Spanish regions, mainly Andalusia and the Valencian Community, has also contributed to this growth. In 2018, the region's net migration with the rest of Spain turned negative for the first time, and this trend has continued ever since. In Spain, it is the community whose population has grown the most, ahead of Madrid and the Valencian Community. On the other hand, like the rest of Spain, Catalonia has not escaped the ageing of its population (1.5 million by early 2023), again the result of a falling birth rate and rising life expectancy. Population growth combined with ageing, rising foreign immigration: these various data marking Catalonia's demography are set to continue over the coming decades, if we are to believe the projections made by Idescat (Catalonia's statistical institute). Published in 2022, they estimate that Catalonia will have 8 million inhabitants in 2030 and over 8.77 million in 2060. These increases should always be due to the contribution of foreign immigration. Life expectancy should reach 88 years for women and 83.2 for men (compared with 86.3 and 80.8 in 2016). Quite logically, this demographic evolution means that we need to set up a healthcare system adapted to this new age pyramid, in which the over-65s (estimated at 21.9% of the total in 2030 and 29.3% in 2060), and even the over-85s, will increasingly predominate. And that the system will also be able to finance an ever-increasing number of pensions. In the short term, the study also estimates that the regions to benefit from this demographic growth will be those along the coast: Girona, Barcelona and Tarragona, with the exception of the Ebro coast. Today, more than half of Catalonia's population lives in the Barcelona metropolitan area (the city and 25 kilometers surrounding it). The second largest urban agglomeration is Reus-Tarragona. The remainder of the population is spread around the Costa Brava, the Costa Daurada, the Llobregat valley and the cities of Lleida and Girona.
Catalan and Castilian, official languages
In Catalonia, two languages have the status of official languages, Castilian (Spanish) and Catalan. Although the latter is considered to be the language "proper" to Catalonia, as it originates from its historical territory. This situation is the result of a multi-stage process. Excluded under the Franco dictatorship, the use of Catalan first benefited from the legal status given to languages by the Spanish constitution of 1978. Article 3 of this constitution specifies that Castilian is "the official Spanish language of the State" and recognizes the other official languages of the various autonomous communities, in accordance with their status. On this basis, the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 1979 formalized Castilian and Catalan as official languages of Catalonia. The Statute of Autonomy of 2006 will then specify that "all people have the right to use both and that the citizens of Catalonia have the right and duty to know them." This statute also specifies that the proper language of Catalonia is Catalan and as such the Catalan language will be the language of "normal and preferential" use in public administrations and in the Catalan means of communication. It will also be used as a "vehicle" for education. In the same year, Aranese, the language spoken in the Valle d'Aran, will be considered the language of this territory and will also be an official language.
Different practices in different regions
Catalan is an Indo-European language belonging to the Occitan-Romance branch of the Romance languages. Like the other Romance languages, it derives from "vulgar" Latin, the common language of the Romans who settled in Hispania. The way it is spoken in Catalonia can be divided into two main blocks: "northern" Catalan, which also includes "central" Catalan and can be heard in the "comarques" of the north and Barcelona, and "western" Catalan, which, further south in Catalonia, has similarities with Valencian. While the use of Catalan remained stable in absolute terms between 1980 and 2010, it declined proportionally between 2003 and 2008, mainly due to strong immigration (around 500,000 people during this period), with 36% of the population speaking Spanish. Nevertheless, Catalans today are generally bilingual, with a good command of both Catalan and Spanish. According to a study carried out in 2018 by the generalitat's culture department, 94.4% of the Catalan population understood Catalan, 85.5% spoke it, 81.2% could read it and 65.3% could write it. According to the same study, 36.3% of the Catalan population spoke Catalan as their usual language, compared with 50.7% who spoke Castilian. Nearly 7% indicated that both languages were familiar to them. This general result revealed regional differences. In five regions (including those in the province of Girona), over 50% of inhabitants considered Catalan to be their usual language (up to almost 74% in the Ebre region), while in the other three (Barcelona metropolitan area, Penedes and Tarragona camp), this percentage fell below 40% (-30% in the Barcelona metropolitan area). These figures obviously reflect the presence of a higher level of immigration, both from other regions of Spain and from Latin America.
