"Here, we're holding on as best we can." This is what Maria, a resident of Prada, says. She has been attending the Catalan Summer University (UCE) for years and sadly describes how Catalan is being lost in everyday life in Northern Catalonia, in businesses and homes. She turns to a couple of journalists in the UCE auditorium: she's curious to know which part of the Principality the accent she's heard them speak with corresponds to. Before the talk begins, she takes the opportunity to point out that, when she goes down to the Principality, she never switches languages: "When I go to Girona, I always speak Catalan. If they speak to me in Spanish, I leave. Catalan must be defended," she claims. But it's difficult to do so when, across the border, the French state tries by every means to keep it out of the institutions.