[hutzlibu]

"Source: look it up."

Those are the best, especially on controversial subjects. You basically say, that first you learned in catalan, that valencian is just a catalan dialect - and then you was influenced by people from Valencia who told you otherwise and for some reasons you rather believed them.

The question is, why should anyone here also believe those friends of yours? It just sounds to me, you have been influenced by different ideologies - as this is a politically loaded subject, where people usually do not apply scientific standards to a discussion, but rather emotions.