Education minister: Catalonia will not implement language quotas in schools despite ruling

"Language learning is not about quotas, but about teaching," Catalan education minister Josep González-Cambray reaffirmed on Tuesday, only three days before the deadline to implement the Supreme Court ruling which establishes that 25% of all classes in schools should be taught in Spanish.

In response to this judicial decision – which Cambray stated schools need not heed – the government will issue a language policy decree for schools after gauging Catalan residents' opinions through an open participatory process.

Catalonia has a longstanding policy of language immersion, ie teaching in Catalan. With Spanish the dominant language in the media and online, the education policy is designed to protect the Catalan language, ensure bilingualism, and avoid the creation of separate language communities.

An education law passed by Spain's conservative People's Party government in 2015 was the starting gun for a legal process that ended up in Spain's Supreme Court and most recently led to the High Court in January 2022 confirming that Catalan schools had two months to introduce a 25% quota of classes in Spanish.

That deadline expires on Friday but Cambray has insisted that schools should not comply and that he has already responded to the courts to explain that they should address him directly, rather than schools.

"Strengthen" Catalan

The government's response to the deadline is this new decree. Cambray has not made any specific initial proposal as to its contents but said that it will be built on the basis of the contributions received.

The consultation will be aimed at municipal entities and the general public, as well as any other interested bodies.

Cambray stated that its objectives are to "strengthen" the linguistic model employed in schools and to provide more legal certainty.

The minister also said that the new decree seeks to gather a new pedagogical, political and social consensus on the language, adding that it will guarantee equality and will contribute to increasing the use of Catalan in the future.

Cambray also said the government supported a teachers' strike against the 25% ruling, despite the fact that strike organizers have criticized his departments response, on top of the legal decision itself.

Podcast

Listen below to our recent podcast on the issue: Catalan in schools – reasons behind language immersion and why it's in jeopardy.