Catalan Language at School

In Catalonia's public schools, Catalan is the language of instruction in order to guarantee that all pupils end their studies knowing both official languages: Catalan and Spanish. Spanish is taught as a subject. The model works, and Catalan pupils not only know Catalan but they also get the same results in Spanish language exams, if not better, than in the rest of Spain. In addition, the model has been praised as a good practice by the European Commission and UNESCO.

However, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that Spanish should be language of instruction in Catalan schools based on an appeal by 3 parents, who took the Catalan Government to court for denying to school their children in Spanish within the public education system of Catalonia. Many legal experts think that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to change the entire school model, already defined by several laws. Furthermore, the Spanish Constitutional Court has validated twice the Catalan school model, in 1994 and in 2010. In addition, teacher unions and parents associations back the current model.

This controversy has been used by some Spanish politicians throughout Spain, most of them from the People's Party (PP). According to most of the Catalan political parties, it is a false controversy only created for electoral reasons to feed Spanish nationalism.