Catalans (Catalan, French and Occitan: catalans; , Italian: catalani, ) are a Romance ethnic group native to Catalonia, who speak Catalan. The current official category of "Catalans" is that of the citizens of Catalonia, an autonomous community in Spain and the inhabitants of the Roussillon historical region in southern France, today the Pyrénées Orientales department, also called Northern Catalonia and Pays Catalan in French. Some authors also extend the word "Catalans" to include all people from areas in which Catalan is spoken, namely those from Andorra, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, eastern Aragon, Roussillon, and the city of Alghero in Sardinia. The Catalan government regularly surveys its population regarding its "sentiment of belonging". As of July 2019, the results point out that 46.7% of the Catalans and other people living in Catalonia would like independence from Spain, 1.3% less than the year before. Historical background In 1500 BCE the area that is now known primarily as Catalonia was, along with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, inhabited by Proto-Celtic Urnfield people who brought with them the rite of burning the dead. Much of the Pyrenees mountains was inhabited at the time by peoples related to modern Basques, and today many town names in the western Catalan Pyrenees can be linked to Basque etymologies. These groups came under the rule of various invading groups starting with the Greeks that founded Empúries and the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, who set up colonies along the coast, including Barcino (present-day Barcelona). Following the Punic Wars, the Romans replaced the Carthaginians as the dominant power in the Iberian eastern coast, including parts of Catalonia, by 206 BCE. Rome established Latin as the official language and imparted a distinctly Roman culture upon the local population, which merged with Roman colonists from the Italian peninsula. An early precursor to the Catalan language began to develop from a local form of popular Latin before and during the collapse of the Roman Empire. Various Germanic tribes arrived following nearly six centuries of Roman rule, which had completely transformed the area into the Roman province of Tarraconensis. The German Visigoths established themselves in the fifth century, making their first capital in the Iberian peninsula Barcelona, and they later would move to Toledo. This continued until 718 when Muslim Arabs took control of the region in order to pass through the Pyrenees into French territory. With the help of the Franks, a land