> On the other hand, isn't "Unionist" a peculiar word to refer to your neighbours?
Independentist is the person who would prefer Catalonia being an independent state.
Unionist is the person who wants Catalonia to stay united with Spain.
I think that both terms are quite neutral. Do you have any idea for a better terminology?
> This is debatable, specially in orthography.
I guess that you are aware that there's an annual exam that assesses the knowledge level in several subjects (PISA). The result of this test shows, year after year, that the knowledge of Spanish language of the Catalan kids is slightly over the average of the country; and quite higher than many other regions that are Spanish monolingual.