Anti-Catalan controversy in Northern Catalonia. The far-right municipal government of the symbolic city of Elne has decided to celebrate for the first time the partition of Catalonia resulting from the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 –a consequence of the Catalan defeat against Castile in the Reapers' War–, which meant that the Catalan regions of Roussillon, Capcir, Alta Cerdanya, Vallespir, and Conflent remained under the yoke of the Kingdom of France. It will do so in an event this Saturday organized by the local executive of the ultra Steve Fortel –who supported the collaborationist Marshal Henri Pétain and who ran with the local candidacy Elne à Cœur, which is positioned even further to the right than the National Rally– to exalt the dismemberment of Catalonia. The initiative has generated much controversy.

"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.