Catalan is a romance language named after the autonomous province Catalonia in Spain and spoken by well over 9 million people worldwide. It is also the national and only official language of Andorra. Most Catalan speakers, however, reside in Spain's Catalonia and Valencia provinces. Catalan is not a dialect of Spanish, but a language that developed independently from Vulgar Latin during the Middle Ages around the Pyrenees region. During the 19th century and the rise of a nationalist cultural movement in Catalonia, the language was revived as a literary language. Since the 1980s, Catalan has been the language used in state schools, and thus most residents of Catalonia are bilingual in Catalan and Spanish.
