Autonomous communities of Spain
Spanish legislation, most notably in the Statutes of Autonomy of the bilingual communities, use the term "own language", or "language proper to a community", to refer to a language other than Spanish that originated or had historical roots in that particular territory. The Statutes of Autonomy of the respective autonomous communities have declared Basque the language proper to the Basque Country and Navarre, Catalan the language proper to Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community—where it is historically, traditionally and officially known as Valencian—and Galician to be the language proper to Galicia. There are other protected regional languages in other autonomous communities. As a percentage of total population in Spain, Basque is spoken by 2%, Catalan/Valencian by 17%, and Galician by 7% of all Spaniards. A 2016 Basque Government census revealed 700,000 fluent speakers in Spain (51,000 in Basque counties in France) and 1,185.000 total when passive speakers are included.
Names given to the Spanish language
Conversely, some nationalist circles prefer the term "español" because they perceive their ethnic community to be distinct from that of Spain and therefore do not object to the language of Spain being called Spanish. In Basque-speaking regions, whose language is not of Romance origin (Basque is considered by many scholars to be a language isolate), some Basque speakers also use the term "erdara" or "erdera" ("foreign") specifically for Spanish, since for them, it is the prevalent foreign language, just as in the French Basque Country, "French language" is the usual meaning of "erdara"; in fact, "erdara" is another language, different from Basque.