Hello, I am Yuri I live in Priorat great wine zone in east Spain, at Catalunya, the region whose capital is Barcelona.
We have an especial language coming from latin, like french, italian, spanish, portuguese etc wich is talked by 10 million people in Spain, a little in France and a very very little in Italia, at Sardinia Island's town Alghero.

Altough we can easily use spanish, for more than a half of the population in Catalunya (this is perhaps more than 4 million people) catalan is the mother languge, and also the normal and used language all the time, and there are concepts that are for us better to assimilate in our language that in spanish or other foreign languages, is this is so the word of God, The Letters from Heaven, for this I've found important to begin this work. I started January and by the moment we have 106 letters translated for you to enjoy, because altough you couldn't understand, catalan really sounds beautiful (like all idioms in the world).

I invite you to ask what you want about my language and my country, it would be a pleasure for me to explain you.

God bless you all
Yuri

Sorry, I forgot to say that catalan is the oficial language of Andorra, a little state in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain. Because is member of UNO catalan is official in their world events.

Blessings

Yuri

Thank you Berit and Wunluv for your support, off course you can come hear and visit my country, we have beach, mountains, cities (Barcelona) and little towns (like mine) wet forest and dry desserts in a few 200 kms, is like a world in miniature... And I have a Wine shop at Reus so we will spent a very good time!!
Catalan was born like all the latin tongues with the mixture of roman latin with the language of the natives. At this time were born spanish, portuguese, french, as the most known romanic tongues, and other more unknown in wich we find provençal, oc (in france) catalan and gallego in spain, and more others, sorry for forget.
As you say, Catalan is similar to spanish, but have diferent pronunciation and that makes difficult for people form Madrid to understand us when we talk. It have also similarities with french, because catalan is also spoken in south France, portuguese, and off course Italian, some people says that spoken they are really similar.
We have the first writings in Catalan of XI century and like all other languages we have writers, some of them being translated into english, spansish, german and other languages.
Catalan was forbidden in some times off the history, the most recent with Franco's tyrany regim, just 30 yers ago, but I don't know what this tongue have that we want it to keep alive as all the others. For me is coming from my heart and what i feel with this language i can't feel with another, for this I think there aren't tongues more importants than others, just with more users.
Some Historical Famous Catalans? Dalí, Gaudí. and sure there are others that you might know....

Thank you for interesting, you don't know how this makes me happy.

God bless you. Yuri