Parliament urges Google Maps not to translate Catalan and Aranese place names into Spanish

The Catalan parliament approved a draft resolution on Thursday urging tech giant Google not to translate Catalan and Aranese place names into Spanish in Google Maps.

The motion, which was also passed in the Balearic Islands, was backed by pro-independence Esquerra, Junts, and CUP as well as the Socialists and anti-austerity En Comú Podem in Catalonia by the Parliament's culture committee. 

According to ruling Esquerra, the party that put forth the motion, place names like Empúries or Penedès are still translated into Spanish as Ampurias or Panadés. This, they say, also occurs in the Balearic Islands as well as the Valencia region neighboring Catalonia to the south. 

"Place names are part of people's intangible cultural heritage and identity and are an essential element in the identification of the territories," culture committee spokesperson Irene Aragonès, of Esquerra, said, adding that it "made no sense" to keep using names that respond to a historical push to "assimilate."

The motion calls on Google to use the same criteria it follows in other countries. In England, for example, a Spanish Google Maps user will see 'Londres' appear on the map rather than 'London' as it is a large, international city, but smaller places like 'Liverpool' are not translated. 

This is important, Esquerra argued, as  "with Catalan and Aranese, the spelling changes were used for absolutist and Francoist tools for ​​political, cultural, and territorial manipulation."

The text also includes an amendment calling on other digital platforms such as Wikipedia to refrain from translating place names and to urge the Catalan government to do more to prevent the Google search engine's algorithm from hiding hits in Catalan.