Catalan High Court suspends decision excluding Spanish as instruction language in Catalan schools

The Catalan High Court has suspended four paragraphs of the guidelines that the Catalan Department of Education sent to Catalan public schools for the 2022-2023 school year.

The paragraphs in question didn’t explicitly include Spanish as the language of instruction and language of habitual use in schools. 

With this decision, judges have sided with the appeal of the group Assemblea per una Escola Bilingüe (AEB), ruling that the sections only contemplated Catalan as the habitual language in all areas of the school, in violation of the Spanish Constitution.

The guidelines followed two 2022 laws that were put in place to protect Catalan as the working language in schools and were challenged by AEB.

In late 2022, the case was dismissed administratively, as it was considered that the guidelines were following current laws and were directed exclusively at employees of the Department of Education.  

Complaint over dismissal to Spanish Supreme Court 

But AEB, filed a complaint to the Spanish Supreme Court over the dismissal, which forced the TSJC to take on the case.

The Spanish Supreme Court argued that the absence of any reference to Spanish, a co-official language in Catalonia, in the guidelines went beyond the legal framework.

Furthermore, the Spanish court ruled that the regulations “intends to shape the Catalan citizens to a collective culture in which the Catalan language is a basic factor for social integration”, and that it was aiming at all the education workers, including teachers, not just civil servants within the department.

Consequently, the TSJC ruled on Monday that four paragraphs of the guidelines that addressed the questions were to be taken out.

Content of suspended paragraphs

Specifically, the paragraphs that have been annulled stated that schools must ensure that Catalan, or Aranese in the Aran Valley, as native languages, are to be habitually used as the working language and the language of instruction in the education system.” According to the High Court, the absence of any reference to Spanish doesn’t ensure its adequate presence and also does not guarantee that there are monitoring and evaluation tools in place to ensure that students acquire the needed linguistic competences.

The TSJC also suspends references to Catalan “as the language of the institution, and therefore the language of habitual use in all areas of the school, in relations with the educational community and social organizations, in general.”

This affects internal and external communication, both oral and written, interactions between teachers and students, training of teachers and other non-teaching staff at schools.

The ruling also suspends the two paragraphs that reference Catalan as an “integration tool.”

"Particularly important ruling”

The High Court, however, did not suspend other parts of the guidelines that AEB had initially included in the complaint, in language on school signage.

According to the ruling, it will not be mandatory for schools to provide signage in both Catalan and Spanish, although AEB has already announced they will appeal the decision to the Spanish Supreme Court.

Regarding the ruling, AEB stated that it was “particularly important” as it “prohibits future general guidelines aimed at making Catalan the sole language of instruction.”

Now the organization will formally request the Catalan Department of Education to “acknowledge the sociolinguistic reality of Catalonia and apply the judicial ruling to the guidelines for the upcoming 2025-2026 school year.”

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