What is the position of the main Spanish Catalonia independence movements on French Catalonia?

Question

The geographic area of Catalonia is not limited to Spain but extends to France, corresponding roughly to the French department of Pyrénées-Orientales. This area is referred as Northern Catalonia.

What is the position of the main independence movements in (still Spanish) Southern Catalonia on Northern Catalonia? Did they plan to have the two Catalonias ultimately reunited?

As a comparison, I think most movements for the independence of the Basque Country (e.g. ETA) seek the reunification of the French and Spanish parts?

See this article for a northern point of view on the independence of Southern Catalonia

Answer 1

The so called Països Catalans, that is, the Catalan Countries refers to those territories where the Catalan language is spoken. It comprises these territories:

• Andorra
• France: Roussillon
• Italy: Alghero, in Sardinia
• Spain: Catalonia, Valencia, Balearic Islands, parts of Aragon (La Franja), parts of Murcia (Carche)

However, the political aspect of Catalan Countries is a bit different. Since I cannot find any poll about this matter to show the amount of support it has, I will focus on the parties in Catalonia and their ideology. There are three main independentist parties in Catalonia: PDCat, ERC and CUP and their aims towards a final state are not the same:

• PDCat, a centre-right nationalist party, does not mention Països Catalans in their postulates (in Catalan).
• ERC, a centre-left independentist party, defends the union of the regions nowadays in Spain:

Esquerra Republicana is a Catalan political left-wing party defined as social democratic, in favour of the independence of the Catalan Countries, including Catalonia, Valencia, and Balearic and Pityusic Islands.

• CUP, a left-wing independentist party, does defend the unity with French Roussillon and, as so, has local assemblies in that region.

Recent polls give 24.7% of support to ERC, 13.6% to PDcat and 8.2% to CUP.

Also, there are some independentist newspapers like Vilaweb that do consider País (Country) the union of all the parts described above with the exception of Alghero in Italy and Carche in Murcia.

Answer 2

Northern Catalans have no desire for independence, and there's no will to "impose" independence on them - nor that they could, even if they wanted. It's impossible to say if a future Catalan Republic would be expansionistic towards the Catalan-speaking regions - the so-called Catalan Countries, but as today's date, they have enough problems trying to break free from Spain to look for the independence of others.