Catalan has enjoyed special status since the approval of the Statute of Autonomy of 1979 which declares it to be the language "proper to Catalonia".

[4] This is attributed to extensive migration from other areas in Spain during the second half of the 20th century, as a consequence of which many Catalans have one or both parents born outside Catalonia.

[citation needed] Outside the family, 48.6% of the population indicated that they addressed strangers exclusively or preferentially in Catalan, while the proportion of those who used Spanish was 41.7%, and 8.6% claimed to use both equally.

[6] Spanish has historically been spoken among a minority of civil servants born in other regions in Spain and among segments of the wealthiest bourgeoisie.

The claim that the population would have only increased 20% from 1900 to 1980 is disputable since the population of Spain as a whole doubled from 18 to 37 million even allowing for high levels of emigration from the province to the Western Hemisphere and Europe.According to the linguistic census elaborated by the Government of Catalonia corresponding to 2008, 45.92% of citizens over 15 years old declared Spanish as their [only] habitual language of use, versus 35.64% for Catalan, with 11.95% of complete bilinguals; a larger number claims Catalan as "their own language" (37.25% Catalan compared to 46.53% Spanish and 8.81% bilinguals).

[4] Lastly, since the Statute of Autonomy of 1979, Aranese—a Gascon Occitan dialect—has been official and subject to special protection in the Aran Valley.

This small area of 7,000 inhabitants was the only place where Occitan (spoken mainly in France and some Italian valleys) received full official status.

The Spanish language developed from Vulgar Latin in the North of the Iberian Peninsula, expanding quickly to the South.

However, some political activists claim that Catalan-speaking people continue suffering some types of discrimination, as explained in the European Parliament on January 29, 2014.

[citation needed] Catalan, a Romance language, is regarded by some Iberian linguists as belonging to the Iberian Romance[11] sub-family (which also includes Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, and Aragonese), while others (especially Occitanists) classify it within the Gallo-Romance[12] sub-family (which includes French, Occitan and Gallo-Italian) languages.

The situation is analogous for written-language skills, with central Catalonia scoring the highest percentages (61.4%), and Barcelona the lowest (46.4%).

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[5] if Spanish-speaking migrants are not taken into account.

From all four Provinces of Catalonia, the largest number of habitual foreign language speakers are located in Girona.

[30] In June 2012 the Supreme Court of Spain ruled that schools must also use Spanish as a medium of instruction, if parents wish it, and cannot force Catalan-language education on the entire population, citing the disadvantage of the inability [clarification needed] to be educated in the national language and the necessity of maintaining the ability for citizens to move from one part of Spain to another without learning the local language.