One of the founding fathers of the Catalan national movement was Valentí Almirall (1841-1904). His most important work was his book Lo Catalanisme, published in 1886, my copy of which I came across recently. Catalan is dialectally diverse, but one tendency in recent Catalan politics has been the promotion of a standard variety to the exclusion of the other dialects. How ironic that the title of the founding work of the Catalan movement is incorrect in the standard, in which lo should be el.
[Update 2004/06/11: There is a nice map of Catalan dialects here.]
[Update 2004/06/15: Trevor at kaleboel provides some information about Catalan dialectology and takes issue with this post.]
Posted by Bill Poser at June 11, 2004 12:04 AM