Catalonia (in Catalan: Catalunya; in Aranese: Catalonha) is a Spanish autonomous community considered a historical nationality in its Statute of Autonomy.1 Located in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, it occupies a territory of some 32,000 km², bordered to the north by France and Andorra, to the east by the Mediterranean Sea along a maritime strip of some 580 km,5 to the south by the Valencian Community (Castellón) and to the west by Aragon (Teruel, Zaragoza and Huesca). This strategic location has favored a very intense relationship with the territories of the Mediterranean basin and with continental Europe. Catalonia is made up of the provinces of Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida and Tarragona. Its capital is the city of Barcelona.
As of 2019, the Catalan territory is inhabited by 7 675 217 people6 in a total of 947 municipalities, of which only 64 have more than 20 000 inhabitants (in which more than 70% of the Catalan population lives). Two thirds of the population live in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. It is a densely populated7 and highly industrialized territory, whose economy is second among the autonomous communities, generating 19.0 % of Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP), surpassed only by the Community of Madrid. In terms of GDP per capita, it ranks fourth, after the Community of Madrid, the Basque Country and Navarre.8
Its human development index (0.916)9 is the fourth highest in Spain, behind Navarra (0.926) and ahead of La Rioja (0.910).10 The social services development index places it in ninth position (5.08 points), behind Aragón (5.15) and ahead of the Community of Valencia (4.65). 11 In the PISA report, it ranks seventh in reading (500 points), and sixth in mathematics (500 points) and science (504 points), less than 5% behind the first autonomous community (Castilla y León and Navarra).