>>49801829It is a nation even if it has no current independent country, which it had before it was annexed to castille when spain was artificially created. Then the castillan language took over as the official spanish language and the royal elite had a policy of pushing the other spanish languages to extintion, including catalan. Nevertheless catalan speaking regions have always resisted the attempts of conversion and immigrants were always integrated in them. They only achieved spanish being a common tongue in catalan speaking regions by forcing immigration from spanish speaking regions past the civil war and ensuring they don't integrate by banning the use of catalan in public for enough time that their children end up having a common national identity with the rest of the spanish. This is reinforced in the last two decades by encouraging south american immigration the majority of which would rather speak their native language than having to learn a new one. The situation is such that ethnic catalans, who are now less than half of the suddenly increased population, are more socially pressured to learn spanish than the rest is pressured to learn catalan, even when both languages share coofficiality in the current legal status, and spain won't enforce any law that might contradict their anticatalan policy. So independence becomes the only choice to avoid extintion and preserve each nation in a different country.
