High Court rules student has right to be taught additional core subject in Spanish 

Catalonia's High Court (TSJC) has recognized the right of a student at the Turó del Drac school in Canet de Mar (40km north of Barcelona) to be taught another core subject in Spanish, in addition to Spanish language lessons. 

The ruling partially accepts the appeal from the girl's parents against the original decision from Catalonia's education department. 

The court, however, dismissed the rest of the appeal and upheld the school's overall linguistic policy. 

The High Court considers that despite the immersion system being in place for students to be fluent in both languages, teachers cannot forget about those families who are temporarily in Catalonia. Therefore, judges say that the immersion system should only be applied in a school where students are separated by language.

After a request by the court, the director of Turó del Drac school informed that subjects are not taught in only one language as the students' diversity is what sets the needs in the classroom.

Only in Turó del Drac school, students with Catalan as their mother tongue dropped from 60% to 45%, while those with Spanish as their mother tongue remained at 30%. 5% of the students speak Arab and 6% other languages.

"Political bias"

The Catalan education minister, Anna Simó, has accused the Catalan High Court of having an "inadmissible political bias." For the minister, forcing a school to teach another core subject in Spanish is a way of applying the 25% of school instruction, and the court does not follow "any education laws, nor teaching curriculums," she added.

The ministry will appeal the decision, but authorities were not surprised as judges "continue with their usual way of doing."

"We believe this decision does not reflect any language learning or any educational project, nor with the minority use of Catalan, not only in schools but in society," she added.

Court battles 

Early in December 2021, the Catalan High Court ruled that 25% of the lessons of a P5 class – 5-year-olds – in Turó del Drac should be in Spanish, after a request from a pupil's family. 

Several families of other students affected by the ruling joined the Catalan education department's efforts to appeal the decision. 

The families of up to 30 children said their objective was to emphasize the will of the majority to ensure that the Catalan language immersion system remains in place. 

The language policy in schools has been a subject of debate since November 23, 2021, when Spain's Supreme Court ruled that 25% of school instruction must be given in Spanish.   

Immersion system

There are over 1.6 million students in Catalonia and since 1983, the vast majority of schools use Catalan as the working language with pupils. Catalonia has two main official languages, Spanish and Catalan, but there is a Catalan immersion system in place to strengthen the use of the language. 

The goal of this education policy in public and semi-public schools is for students to be proficient in both languages. Most of Catalonia’s students go to these kinds of schools; private ones, on the other hand, are exempt from implementing the immersion system. 

"The immersion system places a community, students, in this case, in a language setting to achieve full bilingualism. And in Catalonia, there are two coexisting languages, Catalan and Spanish, but there is one that is clearly stronger in society," Anna Rosès, a Catalan language teacher at Barcelona’s Escola Pia Sarrià, told Catalan News. 

Some of the reasons why Spanish has a bigger presence are because of pop culture, cinema, television channels, court rulings, or other day-to-day activities, in which people tend to favor the language in certain settings.

Listen to our Filling the Sink podcast to learn more about the immersion system in Catalan schools.