The Autonomous Community of Catalonia (Catalan: Comunitat Autònoma de Catalunya; Spanish: Comunidad Autónoma de Cataluña) is today one of the 17 autonomous communities in Spain. Cataluña covers an area of 32,114 square kilometres and official languages are Catalan and Spanish (also known as Castilian). In the Aran Valley, Aranese (Occitan) is also official. Cataluña borders on Valencia to the south, Aragon to the west, France and Andorra to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the east and south east.

After Franco's death in 1975 and the adoption of a democratic constitution in Spain in 1978, Cataluña recovered the autonomous status it had lost with the fall of the Second Spanish Republic at the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939.