by Eileen Sanders Catalonia is an autonomous region of Spain with material and cultural wealth. Despite its affiliation with Spain and peaceful coexistence, its people feel truly separate from the rest of Spain due to their strong sense of independent regional identity. The laws and policies currently in place reveal how truly separate identities are between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Specifically, the linguistic debate in the educational system is an important illustration of this sentiment and from it many debates and tensions have manifested. Image Source In Spain the autonomous community of Catalonia is considered to be a bilingual region. Here Catalan and Spanish (Castilian) coexist, however, there are virtually no Catalan monolinguals: whoever speaks Catalan necessarily speaks Spanish, too. A 2013 census found that 73.2% of the population of Catalonia could speak Catalan (5.35 million people), 95% could understand it and 55.8% could write it. There are significa...