As is our tradition let's head into the weekend with a #geoweirdness thread!
With less than three weeks to go until the next Geomob Barcelona (on 29 May 🗓️) it's fitting that we take a look at the geographic oddities of Catalonia.
3/ The treaty however created some border complexities.
We’re passionate about exclaves here at OpenCage, and Catalonia has one!
The treaty gave all villages north of the Pyrenees to France 🇫🇷
But this meant the Catalan "town" of Llíva was not part of the transfer.
Today this Catalan town is completely surrounded by the French “département” of Pyrénées-Orientales
@opencage the road between LLivia and main spain territory (D68 on the map) has a special international statute, of little use today since France and Spain are both member of the Schengen area
5/ Nevertheless, in the interest of #geoweirdness we do need to mention Tabarnia.
This fictional region of Catalonia imagines an area that opposes independence. It is a neologism whose name combines two Catalan provinces, Tarragona and Barcelona. Opponents of independence often use it to highlight the political challenges of the independence movement.
6/ Many people know about the linguistic situation in Catalonia. It’s one of the purest linguistic examples of diglossia (two dialects or languages are used simultaneously by one community), but there are actually three officially recognised languages in Catalonia.
Catalan, Spanish and Aranese.
Aranese is a dialect of Occitan spoken in the Val d’Aran. It has protected official status, and it is the only area of Occitania where the language is protected.
8/ While Aranese is a tiny linguistic island, Catalan is much more widely spoken. It is the official language of Andorra 🇦🇩, has official status in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and Valencia, and in the city of Alghero on Sardinia, Italy 🇮🇹
10/ The capital of Catalonia is Barcelona, it is the second largest city in Spain.
Because of its grid system maps of Barcelona typically do NOT have north at the top! Instead maps are aligned so that the city's unique grid system is shown up-down/right-left.
11/ As if that is not confusing enough for the 12 million tourists who visit Barcelona each year (approximately ten times the city's population), residents of the La Salut neighbourhood successfully campaigned to have the 🚌 🚏 116 bus route removed from Google and Apple Maps to battle overcrowding caused by tourists trying to visit the world-famous Park Güell, designed by legendary architect Antoni Gaudi.
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