News comment: "Catalonia vote: The French who see Barcelona as their capital"

Let's do the news comments! I had so many ideas for more unrestricted your-say posts... But no! You wanted me to write news comments...

Just a joke, you know I like to comment current happenings :)

This is the news I chose (from the BBC news webpage): Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

In my opinion Catalonia is in the middle of a very important process. Step by step, Catalonia gets more international acknowledge. To be honest, I had never heard anything about this little nation until I came here and the life threw me just inside this little mess of independists, ridiculing Spaniards, South American immigrants and people who just want to live their life and don't care about all the political problems.

So it was a completely new culture for me and as you remember from my little presentation I was still quite immaTURE when I came here. The anything I was worrying about was why on earth I had to learn two different languages. In the first place, I simply thought that all those "Catalonia should be an independent nation" and the "We can't lose our own language and our own culture" things were ridiculous. But today, now that I've lived here for four years, I can only support Catalonia and wish it the best to his way on being a widely recognized state.

It's interesting to see how even French people in the southern part of their huge country have still maintained the Catalan culture and are feel even prouder of it than of their actual home state (given the current politico-geographical situation). The main statement of the news: "The French who see Barcelona as their capital" made me curious.

"The French government is too centralist," says Jordi Vera, leader of the French part of the CDC, and a Perpignan city councillor. "Paris is 500 miles (800km) away. Barcelona is our capital."

There is much to gain. This is one of the poorest parts of France - Catalonia is one of the richest parts of Spain.

Vera asks me how I think the Scottish will vote in their referendum in 2014, before continuing: "This is an historic time for the Catalan people. This region is a laboratory to test how a Europe of smaller states might work."

He too drifts between French and Catalan in his conversation. "Catalan could become an official language of the European Union," he says. "That would mean France would finally have to recognise it."

Catalonia, being one of the richest parts of Spain, in economical and cultural factors, deserves to be an independent nation if the other option means to be trampled by the rest of Spain. I mean, would you steal money from your own mother who is feeding you and making you possible to life? I would feel tremendously embarrassed. To talk about the elections tomorrow, I can't really say who I would vote if I could. The only thing I can say is that I wish the best for Catalonia's future and someone to be its representant and guide who really cares about his nation, its folks and its relationship with the rest of the world.