A region of northeast Spain bordering on France and the Mediterranean Sea. A center of socialist and anarchist activity in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was granted limited autonomy in 1932 by the Spanish Republic. After Catalonian separatists unsuccessfully opposed the Falangist forces in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Catalonian national identity and the Catalan language were suppressed until after the death of Francisco Franco (1975).