Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Is Catalan independent?
On 11 September 2012, a massive pro-independence demonstration marked the Catalan political agenda and re-opened the debate about the right to hold a referendum on the independence of Catalonia, as well as the debate about the feasibility of an independent Catalan state and its integration into the European Union. On 25 September 2012, President of the Government of Catalonia Artur Mas announced a snap regional election to be held on 25 November and argued, referring to the demonstration, that "this election will not be held to help a party [referring to CiU] to perpetuate itself in power. It will be held so that the whole of the Catalan population decides democratically and peacefully what will their future be as a nation." President Mas signed the decree to officially call the Catalan election on 1 October. Mas' move was criticized as an attempt to try to funnel the popular support for independence seen in the September demonstration into an absolute majority of seats in the election.
In the last decades of the 17th century during the reign of Spain's last Habsburg king, Charles II, despite intermittent conflict between Spain and France, the population increased to approximately 500.000 inhabitants and the Catalan economy recovered, not only in Barcelona, but also along the Catalan coast and even in some inland areas. This economic growth was boosted by the export of wine to England and the Dutch Republic, due to the trade war of French minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert against the Dutch and later for the participation of this countries in the Nine Years' War against France, as a consequence, there weren't able to trade with French wine. This new trade caused many Catalans to look to England and, especially, the Netherlands as political and economic models for Catalonia.
Despite the difficult internal situation, including the military occupation, the high new taxes and the mercantilist policy of the House of Bourbon, Catalonia recovered significantly in the course of the 18th century, achieving a successful process of proto-industrialization. The population and the economy both grew, agricultural production increased, and trade increased, complemented during the last quarter of the century with the opening of trade with America; transformations all of which (as in France) tended to undermine the Old Regime and lay the ground for the rise of industrialization, the first signs of which appeared in the 18th-century manufacture of cotton goods and other textiles. By the end of the 18th century, the popular classes began to experience the first effects of proletarianization.
As a part of the intense immigration process which Spain in general and Catalonia in particular have experienced over the last decade, there is a large number of immigrant languages spoken in various cultural communities in Catalonia, of which (Maghrebi) Arabic and Urdu are the most common if Spanish-speaking migrants are not taken into account.
Sardinia is politically a region of Italy, whose official name is "Regione Autonoma della Sardegna" / "Regione Autònoma de Sardigna" (Autonomous Region of Sardinia), and enjoys some degree of domestic autonomy granted by a specific Statute. It is divided into four provinces and a metropolitan city, with Cagliari being the region's capital and its largest city as well. Sardinia's indigenous language and the other minority languages (Sassarese, Corsican Gallurese, Algherese Catalan and Ligurian Tabarchino) spoken on the island are recognized by the regional law and enjoy "equal dignity" with Italian.
The Spanish era ended in 1735, when Charles V was crowned king. For the better part of the next century-and-a-half, Sicily was in personal union with the other Southern Italian Kingdom of Naples, with the official residence located in Naples. In 1861, however, Sicily became part of the Kingdom of Italy as a result of the Risorgimento. After the unification of Italy and the Fascist era, a wave of Sicilian nationalism led to the adoption of the Statute of Sicily, under which the island has become an autonomous region. Since 1946, the island enjoys the most advanced special status of all the autonomous regions, which allows the Sicilian residents to keep 100% of the revenue from all the taxes, without giving back any to the central government in Rome.
As a percentage of the general population of all Spain, Spanish is natively spoken by 74%, Catalan by 17%, Galician by 7% and Basque by 2% of all Spaniards. Occitan is spoken by less than 5,000 people, only in the small region of "Val d'Aran".
Other Romance minority languages, though not official, have special recognition, such as the Astur-Leonese language ("asturianu", "bable" or "llionés") and Aragonese ("aragonés") in Aragon.
The term was also used in Spanish America to describe the first autonomist governments established in 1809, 1810 and 1811 in reaction to the developments in Spain. By the time the delegates were to be chosen for the Cádiz Cortes, some of the American provinces had successfully established their own juntas, which did not recognize the authority of either the supreme central one or the regency. Therefore, they did not send representatives to Cádiz, but rather the juntas continued to govern on their own or called for congresses to set up permanent governments. This development resulted in the Spanish American wars of independence.
Formally speaking, the national language of Spain, the official Spanish language, is the Castilian language (as opposed to regional Spanish languages like Galician, Catalan, Asturleonese and Basque). As such both names, "español" and "castellano", have distinct and independent meanings that may be required for clarity in some specific contexts.
Generally speaking, though, both terms can be used to refer to the (national) Spanish language as a whole, with a preference for one over the other that depends on the context or the speaker's origin. "Castellano" (as well as "Castilian" in English) has another, more restricted, meaning, relating either to the old Romance language spoken in the Kingdom of Castile in the Middle Ages, predecessor of the modern Spanish language, or to the variety of Spanish nowadays spoken in the historical region of Castile, in central Spain.
In September 1821, the city of Campeche proclaimed its adherence to the Plan of Iguala and the new Independent government of Mexico, forcing out its last Spanish governor a month later. At Independence, Campeche was one of the two most important cities on the Yucatán Peninsula, along with Mérida. There was political friction between the two. Campeche was the more liberal of the two, and supported the 1824 Mexican Constitution which established a Federal Republic. In 1824, Campeche's representative proposed that the peninsula be divided into two states: Mérida and Campeche but this was not accepted. Political divisions intensified along with the nationwide struggle between Liberals and Conservatives .
There are two sovereign states in the isles: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ireland, sometimes called "the Republic of Ireland", governs five sixths of the island of Ireland, with the remainder of the island forming Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to simply "the United Kingdom", which governs the remainder of the archipelago with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man and the two states of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, are known as the Crown dependencies. They exercise constitutional rights of self-government and judicial independence; responsibility for international representation rests largely upon the UK (in consultation with the respective governments); and responsibility for defence is reserved by the UK. The United Kingdom is made up of four constituent parts: England, Scotland and Wales, forming Great Britain, and Northern Ireland in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Of these, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have "devolved" governments, meaning that each has its own parliament or assembly and is self-governing with respect to certain areas set down by law. For judicial purposes, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales (the latter being one entity) form separate legal jurisdiction, with there being no single law for the UK as a whole.
Word of Spain's troubles in 1808 in the Napoleonic Wars soon reached Caracas, but only on 19 April 1810 did its "cabildo" (city council) decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. On 5 July 1811, seven of the ten provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela declared their independence in the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. The First Republic of Venezuela was lost in 1812 following the 1812 Caracas earthquake and the Battle of La Victoria (1812). Simón Bolívar led an "Admirable Campaign" to retake Venezuela, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela in 1813; but this did not last either, falling to a combination of a local uprising and Spanish royalist reconquest. Only as part of Bolívar's campaign to liberate New Granada in 1819-20 did Venezuela achieve a lasting independence from Spain (initially as part of Gran Colombia).
In 1492, the arrival of Christopher Columbus on a Castilian-paid expedition paved the way for the Spanish colonization of the Americas. As a result of this process, most countries in South America now speak the same language as Castile. Until about the eighteenth century, the Kingdom of Castile, and not Spain as a whole, was the colonizing power, and the language used was called "castellano". Thus, some Latin American countries formerly under Spanish rule have retained the custom of calling it "castellano", while others eventually switched to calling it "español", with many different factors influencing the final choice.
""Irish Catholics believe that their devotion to their religion and to the Holy See handicaps their efforts for independence. While this in no way shakes their adherence to the Faith, they naturally resent the audacity of an officially heretical government approaching the Holy See on occasions through Catholic or non-Catholic channels, seeking to procure, on pretexts of faith and morals, the condemnation of Catholic Ireland. It is true that the latter happens to be weak and England strong; hence England tries to turn into an instrument of further oppression a force on which Ireland should obviously have paramount claims and for which Ireland suffered and fought and bled while the oppressor repudiated, blasphemed and persecuted it.""
Angola was a colony of Portugal for more than 400 years, beginning the 15th century. Three principal parties, MPLA, National Front for the Liberation of Angola the FNLA and the National Union for Total Independence of Angola the UNITA, fought for independence. After many years of conflict that weakened all of the insurgent parties, Angola gained independence on 11 November 1975, after the Carnation Revolution overthrew the Marcelo Caetano regime in Portugal. A fight for dominance broke out immediately between the three nationalist movements, resulting in a civil war soon after independence. The civil war continued with UNITA fighting against the ruling MPLA. Both parties received support and backing from other countries.
In Spain and in some other parts of the Spanish-speaking world, Spanish is called not only (Spanish) but also (Castilian), the language from the kingdom of Castile, contrasting it with other languages spoken in Spain such as Galician, Basque, Asturian, Catalan, Aragonese and Occitan.
News of Spanish losses in the 1808 Napoleonic Wars soon reached Latin America, but only on 19 April 1810 did the "cabildo" (city council) of Caracas decide to follow the example set by the Spanish provinces two years earlier. On 5 July 1811, seven of the ten provinces of the Captaincy General of Venezuela declared their independence in the Venezuelan Declaration of Independence. The First Republic of Venezuela was lost in 1812 following the 1812 Caracas earthquake and the Battle of La Victoria (1812). Simón Bolívar led an "Admirable Campaign" to retake Venezuela, establishing the Second Republic of Venezuela in 1813, but this did not last long either, falling to a combination of a local uprising and Spanish royalist reconquest.
Catholic Christianity is the largest religion in Spain, but practical secularization is strong. Only 3% of Spaniards consider religion as one of their three most important values, even lower than the 5% European average. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 abolished Catholicism as the official state religion, while recognizing the role it plays in Spanish society. As a result, there is no official religion and religious freedom is protected.
New Caledonia was formally annexed by France in 1853, and Europeans and Polynesians, as well as other settlers, have since made the indigenous Kanaks a minority (27%, 11% and 39% respectively in the 2014 census). The territory was used as a penal colony from 1864 to 1897, and the Kanaks were "excluded from the French economy and from mining work, and ultimately confined to reservations". Between 1976 and 1988, conflicts between the French government and the independence movement saw periods of serious violence and disorder (culminating in the Ouvéa cave hostage taking in 1988), with the emerging Kanak independence movement gaining support from many Kanaks frustrated with their lower socio-economic status and lack of involvement in the economy, seen as problems caused by the French "exploitation". Though GDP per capita (nominal) is high at $38,921 and though New Caledonia is a major producer of nickel, there is significant inequality in income distribution, with many claiming that the mining revenue benefits people outside the territory and its (declining) mining communities.
Peninsular Spanish is largely considered to be divided into two main dialects: Castilian Spanish (spoken in the northern half of the country) and Andalusian Spanish (spoken mainly in Andalusia). However, a large part of Spain, including Madrid, Extremadura, Murcia, and Castile–La Mancha, speak local dialects known as "transitional dialects" between Andalusian and Castilian Spanish. The Canary Islands also have a distinct dialect of Castilian Spanish which is very close to Caribbean Spanish. Linguistically, the Spanish language is a Romance language and is one of the aspects (including laws and general "ways of life") that causes Spaniards to be labelled a Latin people. The strong Arabic influence on the language (nearly 4,000 words are of Arabic origin, including nouns, verbs and adjectives.) and the independent evolution of the language itself through history, most notably the Basque influence at the formative stage of Castilian Romance, partially explain its difference from other Romance languages. The Basque language left a strong imprint on Spanish both linguistically and phonetically. Other changes in Spanish have come from borrowings from English and French, although English influence is stronger in Latin America than in Spain.
The appearance of the so-called by Castillian-Spanish nationalism peripheral nationalism, in the aforementioned regions of Spain occurred in a time where Spain itself as a whole first began to look into its own concept of nationhood, and where Spaniards began to study their own nationalism between two competing views, the traditionalist, where religion played a significant role in defining the Spanish nation, intrinsically and traditionally Catholic, and strongly monarchical, and the liberal view where sovereignty resided in the nation—the people, as opposed to the monarch—and where some advocated for a uniform centralised State while others preferred decentralization and even republicanism.
Catalan Solidarity for Independence (Catalan: "Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència", "SI"; ) is an electoral coalition in Catalonia, founded in the summer of 2010 as an outcome of the grassroots social movement that initiated and organized the Catalan independence referendums of 2009 and 2010. It was organized as a common political platform for Catalan independentism, dissatisfied with what they considered a pragmatist and conformist policy of other Catalan parties (including the independentist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) towards the issue of independence.
The referendum question, which voters answered with "Yes" or "No", was "Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic?". The "Yes" side won, with 2,044,038 (92.01%) voting for independence and 177,547 (7.99%) voting against, on a turnout of 43.03%. The Catalan government estimated that up to 770,000 votes were not cast due to polling stations being closed off during the police crackdown, although the "universal census" system introduced earlier in the day allowed electors to vote at any given polling station. Catalan government officials have argued that the turnout would have been higher were it not for Spanish and Catalan police suppression of the vote. On the other hand, many voters who did not support Catalan independence did not turn out, as the constitutional political parties asked citizens not to participate in what they considered an illegal referendum.
Changes in support for independence in Catalonia through time can be seen by comparing the results of a survey conducted by Spain's Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas in 1996, which asked: "Personally, would you support or reject Catalonia becoming independent?" with more recent surveys carried out in 2011 and 2012, revealing the level of support in a referendum on the independence of Catalonia.During the morning, like every year, wreaths were laid on the monument to Rafael Casanova in Barcelona's Ronda Sant Pere. An official ceremony was then held in Parc de la Ciutadella where, according to government spokesman Francesc Homs, "our national sentiment" and especially "the Catalan language, after the recent attacks" would be celebrated. The event was led by playwright John Ollé and emceed by the previous director of the Catalan public TV, journalist Mònica Terribas. The official ceremony began with a parade by the Catalan police, the Mossos d'Esquadra. Then, the town Capmany—symbolising the "fight against fire" after its comarca of Alt Empordà suffered a serious wildfire this summer—delivered the Catalan flag to President Artur Mas.
The referendum took place on 1 October 2017, despite being suspended by the Constitutional Court, and despite the action of Spanish police to prevent voting in some centres. According to the Catalan authorities, 90% of voters supported independence, but turnout was only 43%, and there were reports of irregularities. On 10 October 2017, in the aftermath of the referendum, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, declared the independence of Catalonia but left it suspended. Puigdemont said during his appearance in the Catalan parliament that he assumes, in presenting the results of the referendum, "the people's mandate for Catalonia to become an independent state in the form of a republic", but proposed that in the following weeks the parliament "suspends the effect of the declaration of independence to engage in a dialogue to reach an agreed solution" with the Spanish Government.