Foreign holidaymakers in the Spanish Pyrenean ski resorts of the Val d’Aran have been known to scratch their heads over one of the area’s trilingual tourist pamphlets.
The second and third languages, as soon becomes clear from the text and the flags alongside, are Catalan and Spanish, but what on earth is the first? The answer is Aranese, a form of Occitan or Gascon, spoken by about 5,000 people.
