ANYONE thinking of travelling to those beautiful regions of France Languedoc-Roussilon and Midi-Pyrenees can forget it, for as of last September they were replaced by a larger entity merging the two, and the name chosen for the new region is Occitanie.

The name derives from the ancient area of southern France known as Occitania, which in bygone days covered a much larger area and was ruled by the Counts of Toulouse for centuries.

In the new Occitanie there are 13 departements and the population of 5.7 million is spread wide across the area, in which Toulouse and Montpellier are the largest cities.

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The naming of the region that borders the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean was something of a coup for those who have long campaigned for recognition of Occitania as a distinct nation within France.

A referendum saw 44.9 per cent of the people of the area prefer the new name, which contrasts with the fact that the Occitan Party, which promotes autonomy for the area within France, has only a few seats on the region’s various councils.

Again it is language and culture which makes Occitania distinct, with Occitan listed as an official language, across a region that has been described as the “largest stateless nation in Europe”.

In October 2015, a large demonstration took place in Montpellier to campaign for the preservation of the Occitan language – one of five such demonstrations across France in support of minority languages. It was a turning point for various organisations promoting self-determination for the area.

The Occitan Party’s federal secretary is Professor Gustave Alirol, a left leaning environmental campaigner and also leader of France’s Regions et Peuples Solidaires group.

Alirol has been scathing about the French Government’s tinkering with the regional governments of France last year, which resulted in virtually no changes in areas with strong demands for autonomy.

At a conference on the subject earlier this year, he said: “European and regional policies are intimately linked, the centralised states that do not grant normative powers to their regions deprive the latter of their development capacities.”

He was referring to France, but might well have been speaking of the UK, where it is countries, not regions, that are deprived of a future.