Council of Europe backs down on ruling requiring 25% Spanish to be taught in all schools in Catalonia. In its report published on Tuesday, the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages expressed “great concern” about the court’s ruling on immersion, and also warned of the “deterioration” of Valencian in the Valencian Community and Catalan in the Balearic Islands due to the PP government’s policy against its protection.
Although not binding, this is a periodic analysis by the Council of Europe of each country’s compliance with the protection of minority languages. This is the sixth time since Spain signed the Charter in 2001. And in the same way that it usually highlights Spain’s well-developed system for promoting regional languages, it also reminds it of many outstanding issues, the most obvious being justice, an area of administration where the use of co-official and minority languages is not guaranteed.
In their conclusions, the authors also celebrate the introduction of co-official languages in the Congress, as well as the request that the EU include Catalan, Basque and Galician as official languages. “The committee of experts congratulates the Spanish authorities for these initiatives,” they say.
Against the 25% penalty
In its previous reports, the Council of Europe had already approved the language immersion model in Catalonia, where Catalan is the language used in classrooms, but in this new report it has directly reprimanded the courts for the decision that requires the introduction of at least 25% Spanish in all schools and institutes. “The recent court decisions on the linguistic models of schools in the autonomous communities are very worrying,” it underlines.
And he adds: “Setting a minimum percentage of teaching in Spanish for each school individually goes against the obligations accepted by Spain in Article 8 of the Charter.” However, he also recognises that Spanish can be strengthened as a vehicular language to safeguard its learning if this is necessary for social and linguistic reasons.
In the Catalan case, it is worth remembering that the Supreme Court ratified the decision to extend this minimum percentage of Spanish to the entire education system, but a legislative change in Parliament left its resolution pending before the Constitutional Court. The new legislation maintains Catalan as the language of use, but also introduces Spanish as a school language.
The setback with the PP governments
Without mentioning specific political formations, the Committee of Experts leaves a message to the communities governed by the PP such as the Comunitat Valenciana, Illes Balears and Aragon, where it regrets the adoption of measures that also go against the protection of minority languages established in the Charter.
In the case of the Balearic Islands, it criticises Decree 5/2023, which removes the requirement to know Catalan for healthcare, which it considers “particularly regrettable”. Regarding the Valencian Community, where there is a minimum of 25% for the two co-official languages, Spanish and Valencian, the Council is also “greatly concerned” about the recently approved Law on Educational Freedom. “This will considerably reduce the presence of Valencian in the educational model of the Valencian Community, especially in Spanish-speaking areas”, the text states.
The same formula, that of “great concern”, is also used to react to the measures adopted by the Government of Aragon with regard to the Aragonese Government. In specific reference to “the recent budget cuts adopted at regional level, and to the desire expressed by the regional authorities to modify the legal framework to drastically reduce the space granted to the Aragonese in Aragon”.
