jointly the Aragonese area where Catalan is spoken. This term was maintained in the second half of the 20th century by Catalan linguists such as Joan Giraldo, along with other terms such as Marques d'Aragó (in Spanish, Marcas de Aragón, "Marches of Aragon"), Catalunya aragonesa (in Spanish, Cataluña aragonesa, "Aragonese Catalonia") or la ratlla d'Aragó (in Spanish, la raya de Aragón, "the Aragonese Strip"). Whichever term is used, they all refer to the eastern Catalan-speaking area of Aragon, which borders western Catalonia. These terms all originated in Catalonia but later became popular in La Franja itself. They are therefore Catalonia-centered and hence the Ponent ("Western") reference in the term La Franja del Ponent, because these areas lie to the west of Catalonia. The term Franja de Ponent itself first appeared in the second half of the 1970s, during the Spanish transition to democracy: At the Second International Congress of the Catalan Language (Segon Congrés Internacional de la Llengua Catalana) held in 1985, the normative authority on the Catalan language, known as Institut d'Estudis Catalans, adopted Franja d'Aragó ("Aragonese Strip") as the denomination for the Catalan-speaking territories of Aragon for academic and linguistic purposes, while the denomination Franja de Ponent ("Western Strip") is used mainly in the political arena by some associations, groups and political parties associated with pancatalanism. Later on, alternative denominations such as Aragón Oriental (in Catalan, Aragó Oriental), Franja Oriental or Franja de Levante (in Catalan, Franja de Llevant), all meaning roughly Eastern Aragon or Eastern Strip were created in Aragon. Diverse meanings While the term was created to designate a linguistic area, there are other issues in question: The ecclesiastical sense The linguistic sense The political sense The socioeconomic sense Ecclesiastical sense Many parishes of what is now called la Franja had been historically part of the Diocese of Lleida, along with other, non-Catalan-speaking Aragonese towns. In 1995, Catholic church authorities, through the Papal Nuncio to Spain, informed the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference –Archbishop of Saragossa, Elías Yanes– of the decision of the Holy See to align the diocesan boundaries with the political and historical ones. This meant that 111 parishes and a population of 68,089 were transferred from the Diocese of Lleida to the enlarged Diocese of Barbastro, whose name was then changed to Diocese of Barbastro-Monzón As for the reasons of the transfer, some Catalan ecclesiastical ranks considered that it was a result