CATALONIA. . .

Christopher Jones lives near Perpignan, a nice little French town with a Catalan tradition He now retracts his statement that Madrid is a backwater: "I should clarify that I certainly do not think Madrid is a backwater. However, some Catalan nationalists clearly do and look not only to Perpignan but beyond -- to Brussels. However, Perpignan has an extremely important place in Catalan culture as the capital of the Kingdom of Mallorca. Curiously, the old "Rosselló" is a historical center for rightist Catalan nationalism and rightwingers in general, like Brasillach, Cardona and Dencàs". RH: It is a historical oddity that Perpignan should have been the capital of the island kingdom of Mallorca. Louis XIV acquired Roussillon under the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659). We hear a lot about Basque nationalism in France at the west end of the Pyrenees, but very little about the Catalan nationalism at the eastern end. At the end of the Spanish Civil War, many refugees from Catalonia were housed in what is now the department of Pyrénées Orientales. Did the families of many settle there?