ACCESSIBILITY AND LANGUAGE CHARACTERISTICS IN CATALONIA

Castilianization of Catalonia is often thought to be most intensive in the most accessible and central areas. With the help of Geographical Information Systems and characteristics of the road and railway networ ks, centrality scores for urban municipalities and municipalities near the city of Barcelona have been calculated. The analysis of language characteristics does not show any significant relationship of accessib ility on the one hand and the distribution of language characteristics on the other. Instead, Catalonia's linguistic geography is strongly l inked with massive in-migration of Castilian-speaking minorities. This conclusion may even be valid in a retrospective sense.