The PP and Vox Government of the Consell de Mallorca maintains the million euros for the promotion of Catalan in the 2025 island budgets of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, and will preserve bilingualism in the literary awards of the island institution, as it already did it. This year.
This portfolio led by advisor PP Antonia Rocawill manage a total of 34.9 million euros, 7.4% more than the current year, which will mainly serve to continue promoting the Misericordia building in Palma as the cultural nerve center of Mallorca, and will increase by 140,000 euros the endowment of the island literary prizes and also that of the Cultural Institute of Mallorca which, in this case, amounts to 3.8 million euros.
In the section relating to the promotion of Catalan, more precisely what is officially called language standardizationthe Consell de Mallorca chaired by popular, Llorenç Galmés, will allocate a total of 1,015,108 euros next year.
An amount slightly higher than 939,954 euros budgeted for this year, which supports and strengthens the PP’s commitment to maintaining policies to promote Catalan on the island.
In this regard, it should be noted that more than half of this sum, notably 674,000 euros are intended to pay civil servants dedicated to these tasks within the Consell de Mallorca. The rest to subsidies, including direct financial aid without any public competition, to a whole series of independent entities dedicated to the promotion of Catalan, such as Joves per la Llengua.
In this way, the nominal subsidies that both parties agreed to reduce, but which have not been specified for next year, are preserved. The aforementioned entity will pocket 45,000 euros for the organization of the Correllengua, like the Balearic Cultural Organization (OCB) which this year managed to pocket another 35,000.
And this despite the fact that the OCB, twinned with the Catalan Cultural Open, which applauded in October 2017 the putschists of the Generalitat and the former Catalan president on the run Carles Puigdemont, He demonstrated with Joves last May in the Plaza Mayor of Palma, in favor of exclusion of Spanish and defense of Catalan, as the only language in schools in the Balearic Islands, and against the language policy of the PP government of Marga Prohens.
Of course, the Consell de Mallorca, governed in coalition by the PP and Vox, will maintain Spanish in the Literary Creation Awards of Majorcaas has already happened for the first time this year, thus fulfilling the programmatic agreement signed by the two parties a year ago and which put an end to eight years of left-wing island coalition governments with the separatists.
For this reason, the president of the island, Llorenç Galmés, He appreciated in this regard that his government “we have always defended that the two languages are equal and we have worked hard to make it so.”
Galmés recognized that direct aid is maintained, “nothing is reduced and in the Consell we always have defended our two languages also, which are typical of this land.
From Vox, the vice-president of the island, Pedro Bestardin the same sense, indicated that his party “we have always been in favor of the equality of the two languagesnot on top of each other. This is why we approved the budgets, so that they are the best for the Mallorcans.
However, it must be remembered that the OCB and Joves per la Llengua defend the imposition of Catalan in all areas of society, just like the government of the left pact chaired by the socialist Francine Armengol the last two legislatures.
Indeed, the president of the OCB, Antoni Llabrésalso spoke out several times during this year at the start of the legislature against the language policy of the PP in the Balearics supported by Vox. In particular, for having eliminated the Catalan requirement in matters of public health, incorporating Spanish in official communications from Parliament and approving, among other things, the free choice of language in the education of children.
