Pompeu Fabra year: celebrating the father of modern Catalan

This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Catalan linguist, Pompeu Fabra. It is also the 100th anniversary of the reform of Catalan grammar, which set a new standard for the language and that was one of Fabra’s great achievements. To celebrate, Fabra Year 2018 was launched on Thursday, with a wide range of cultural events planned all over the country in the next few months.

At the launch event held in a theatre in the city of Badalona, near Barcelona, well-known Catalan actors read and performed texts praising Fabra and his work. However, the event also served as a rallying cry for the defense of the Catalan language and the long-standing policy that makes Catalan the working language in schools in Catalonia, which has controversially been questioned by the Spanish government in recent days.