Language, press and contemporaneity: Newspapers in Catalan, 1641-1939

Abstract

This article presents the overall results of research co-funded by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) with the participation of twenty-four researchers from eight universities in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Country. Records and cataloguing were obtained for 3,087 Catalan-language newspapers published primarily in the second half of the nineteenth and first four decades of the twentieth century, in addition to their forerunners from 1641 and the first half of the nineteenth century. The first part of this article is by all five authors and outlines the criteria, methodology and overall results. It is followed by four more parts, each written individually by their respective authors, describing in bold strokes the inception and historical evolution of Catalan-language newspapers in each of the three Catalan-speaking countries, as well as in other Catalan-language cities outside Spain and yet others outside the Catalan linguistic domain on three continents.