Yes, Catalan is alive but is it well?

We could quote from Harris-Vincent:

"It is difficult to point to any language in Europe which has not become the official language of a nation-state which is as strongly placed as Catalan today."

[The Romance Languages, Martin Harris and Nigel Vincent (eds.) (Croom Helm, 1988)]

However, there is a lot of people who are concerned about the future of our language. One should keep in mind that more than one third of the people living in Catalonia now are born outside the country and Catalan is not their first language. Recent polls show that half the population of Catalonia declares Spanish as their first language. Being in contact with such a strong placed language as Spanish can easily make Catalan recessive.