Already in its pact with the ERC, Salvador Illa has committed to promoting Catalan in the classroom. Today, the Minister of Education and Vocational Training of the Generalitat, Esther Niubósaid that improving the social use of Catalan requires transversal measures that go “beyond the educational system”, and opened the door to a change in the percentage of Spanish taught in classrooms. Specifically, Nuibó said that each educational center has a “sociolinguistic context too different to mark an equal percentage” everywhere. Cataloniawith reference to the 25% currently established.
“These are official languages of Cataloniabut it is clear that Catalan is our own language, the vehicular language, and that we must defend and promote it,” said the Minister of Education. Niubó stressed that Catalan cannot be just a school matter, although he defended efforts to deepen it in the education system in the face of the decline in the use of the Catalan language in recent years. “From the point of view of the education system, we must avoid situations of linguistic limitation. A student has the right to speak the language he wants, but what cannot be is that he does so because he does not have a good command of Catalan in this case,” he added.
The Catalan language occupies an important place in the pact between Pedro Sánchez and ERC for the investiture of Salvador Illawhere both groups highlight the “decline in the social use of Catalan”. To this end, the CPS commits to the independentists to strengthen the linguistic policy with “maximum ambition and consensus, with special attention to the defense of the Catalan school model as a guarantee of language learning, its normalization and its promotion in all areas”. For this reason, all immigrant students who have just arrived Catalonia They will have to learn this language.
Catalan for immigrants
Salvador Illa will force arriving immigrants to learn Catalan CataloniaThis is one of the commitments that the already president of the Generalitat has made with MRC to be able to proceed with his investiture. One of the points of the agreement between the two parties provides that Catalan will be the language of learning in the region’s educational centers, also for “newly arrived students.” And not only at school: thanks to this agreement, Illa will also impose Catalan in extracurricular and sports activities.
“Catalan, as the language of Catalonia“must be the language normally used as a vehicular and learning language in the education system and in the reception of newly arrived students. At the end of compulsory schooling, the education system must guarantee full oral and written competence in Catalan and Spanish, both in formal and informal registers”, reads the agreement between Pedro Sánchez and ERC signed last July to invest in Illa.
This imposition is not limited to classrooms. Illa also committed to “spreading the Catalan language in the field of extracurricular activities and popular sports and leisure, through the progressive deployment of Environmental educational plans to all the municipalities of Catalonia and adopting the methodology of linguistic immersion when necessary.
Furthermore, this objective of spreading Catalan does not only concern students. Illa has committed to the ERC to “relaunch the mechanisms of reception, teaching and linguistic revitalization” for adults in order to face the migratory challenge, by strengthening the financial and personal offer of the Consortium for Linguistic Normalization.
