The Catalan question continues to divide

VIC, A PROSPEROUS town of 43,000 people about 90 minutes north of Barcelona, is sometimes called “the capital of Catalan Catalonia”. Almost every building in its medieval town square has a banner calling for “democracy” and the release of the detained separatist leaders. “They think that with prison and repression they will make us disappear,” says Anna Erra, the mayor, who is from Mr Puigdemont’s Catalan Democratic Party (PdeCAT). “With this they make the breach bigger.” It is hard to find a sign in Vic that is not in Catalan. When speaking Spanish Ms Erra, a teacher, sometimes searches for words.

At the other end of the railway line is L’Hospitalet, Catalonia’s second-most-populous municipality, wedged between Barcelona and its airport. It was long a densely packed dormitory for factory workers who had migrated from the rest of Spain. Now it also has an ultra-modern quarter of gleaming offices and hotels, along with Barcelona’s new trade fair, host to the Mobile World Congress. The new municipal library, housed in a former textile factory, has an exhibition of Andalusian mantillas. As elsewhere in Catalonia, children are taught in Catalan, but here they speak Castilian (Spanish) in the playground and at home. “We won’t forget the contempt” the separatists showed for those who disagree with them, says Nuria Marín, L’Hospitalet’s Socialist mayor. “Levels of trust have fallen a lot.”