Amazon confirms: Alexa will not speak Catalan, yet

Amazon's voice assistant Alexa will not speak Catalan for the moment, as directives from the e-commerce giant confirmed to media outlets in Barcelona on Wednesday. Currently, "there is no news" regarding Catalan in Echo speakers or any other devices that include Alexa's technology.

"We do not talk about future announcements. Once it is a reality, we will explain it," Andrés Pazos, Spain's Alexa's business responsible, said to journalists. 

"Our vision is to be beside our users in all possible languages and, of course, the Catalan language is important," he added.

The Catalan business and labor ministry, supervising the Project AINA Catalan language database, is currently under negotiations with companies to make these virtual assistants use Catalan as one of the optional languages.

However, they say that "while no deals are reached, the department will discreetly continue to work to extend the use of Catalan," sources of the ministry told the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

745 million interactions

Four years after launching Alexa in Spain, Amazon registered over 745 million interactions between Catalan users and the voice assistant in 2022. This represents 24% more commands asked than the previous year.

Alexa is mostly used in Barcelona, followed by the southern area of Tarragona, the western area of Lleida, and the northern area of Girona.

One of the main demands by Catalans to Alexa is to set up an alarm, as there have been 14 million requests in 2022. However, the star product is still music, as Alexa users played 32.5 million hours of music in the territory, which equals 3,700 years of non-stop music.

The most asked song was Sebastián Yatra's 'Tacones Rojos,' followed by Catalan artist Rigoberta Bandini's hit 'Ay Mamá,' which was almost chosen as Spain's Eurovision Song Contest candidate.

800,000 users said 'Alexa, te quiero' (Alexa, I love you) in 2022, according to data released by Amazon claiming that "privacy is fundamental."

Workers on strike

Around 100 Amazon workers from Martorelles, a logistic hub near Barcelona, planned to be closed soon, demonstrated in Barcelona against the closure.

"It is not a closure; it is just moving," workers chanted, as they say, the change will impact around 800 families. 

These workers are on a two-week strike ending on Friday, after starting on February 1. They do not want to leave Martorelles and go to the other logistic hubs Amazon is offering in El Far d'Empordà, in the northern part of Catalonia, and to Zaragoza, the capital of Catalonia's neighboring region, Aragón.

The company has offered up to €5,760 in settlement to the workers.