La Franja - Lynn Jenkins (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The term La Franja ("The Strip", more properly Franja de Aragn in Spanish; Franja d'Arag or Franja de Ponent (Western Strip) in Catalan; and Francha d'Aragn or Francha de Lebn (Eastern Strip) in Aragonese) is a term that refers to the territory comprising the Catalan-speaking territories of Aragon bordering Catalonia (Spain). Usually La Franja is considered to be comprised by the municipalities of the following comarcas: Ribagorza, La Litera, Bajo Cinca, Bajo Aragon-Caspe, Bajo Aragn and Matarraa. The thin strip of land is very diverse geographically, ranging from valleys in the Pyrenees to the flat lands by the Ebro, all are included under this umbrella term. As such, La Franja does not have any official recognition nor historical entity by itself, but the term is mostly used in neighbouring Catalonia, especially within Catalan nationalism. The use of a term to refer to the eastern area of Aragon bordering Catalonia as based on linguistic criteria is recent. It was in 1929 when he christened these as Marques de Ponent, "Western Marches" that Catalan geographer Pau Vila used for the first time a term designating jointly the Aragonese comarcas where Catalan is spoken. This term was kept in the second half of the 20th centuries by Catalan philologists such as Joan Coromines, along with other terms such as Marcas de Arag or Marques d'Arag ("Marches of Aragon"), Catalua aragonesa or Catalunya aragonesa ("Aragonese Catalonia") or "la raya de Aragn" or la ratlla d'Arag ("the Aragonese Strip"). Whichever term is used, they all refer to the eastern Catalan-speaking area of Aragon, which borders Catalonia to the west. These terms all originated and remain chiefly used in Catalonia, they are therefore Catalonia-centered and hence the Ponent ... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=934403