Our Comenius Project is a bilateral school association from September 2008 to June 2010 between these two schools: Escola Pia Nostra Senyora from Barcelona and Tornedalsskolan from Haparanda, an upper secondary school in Haparanda, Norrbotten, northern Sweden on the border to Finland.

Swedish and Catalan are two minority languages which are spoken in the northernmost and southernmost parts of Europe. We aim at studying their vitality in teenagers’ lives, together with the difficulties they face in two territories in which they aren’t the only spoken languages. Bilingualism is a common characteristic of both Barcelona and Haparanda’s every day’s life. Therefore, we’d like to study how these minority languages manage to survive in our teenagers’ worlds, what resources they have available in their societies and what challenges lie ahead of them in the near future.

The approach to these similar yet obviously contrasting realities will be done, not only by learning the basics of each minority language, but mainly by using English and ITC skills to learn about the different aspects of teenagers’ lives in the Catalan and Swedish contexts. Observing differences and similarities in teenagers’ lives in the northernmost and southernmost European countries in the context of their minority languages will help students to strengthen the idea of a European network from which to learn and to form lasting friendships for the future.

Students in the rural area of Haparanda in northern Scandinavia will meet students from Mediterranean Barcelona in October 2008 and will learn to deal with their everyday activities in a hectic city centre. Likewise, Catalan students will discover what it is to live in snowy Scandinavia in February 2009, trying activities and various sports connected to snow.