65.1% of residents in Catalonia, Valencia and Balearic Islands speak Catalan well, says report

Just under two-thirds (65.1%) of inhabitants in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands say they can speak Catalan well, according to Plataforma per la Llengua's (Platform for the Language) annual report, InformeCAT. 

Some 95% of residents in the same three areas say they can speak Spanish well. 

The report, presented on Monday, compiles 50 statistics on the state of the Catalan language, using official sources and Plataforma per la Llengua's own studies. 

In Catalonia, 75% of respondents said they could speak Catalan well, compared to 59.5% in the Balearics (Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera) and 51.6% in Valencia. 

Respondents in a study carried out by the Spain's statistics institute (INE) were given three options: they do not speak the language "at all", they speak it "with difficulty" or they speak it "well," Plataforma per la Llengua pointed out. 

The percentage of people who said they could speak Spanish well was 95.3% in Catalonia, 94.7% in Valencia and 94.1% in the islands. 

Plataforma per la Llengua said "the gap in knowledge between the two languages" is explained by the "legal imposition" of Spanish on all citizens and by the "tendency" of many Catalan speakers to switch to Spanish. 

"Worrying gap" 

"This gap is worrying, because beyond the level of knowledge of each language, if people do not see themselves as able to speak Catalan well, it is difficult for them to use it regularly. In addition, in a vicious circle, the fewer habitual speakers of Catalan there are, the fewer spaces to be used the language will have, and the fewer opportunities there will be to speak it. These trends contribute decisively to the marginalization of Catalan and to language replacement," the organization lamented. 

The study found that a majority of people in the three Catalan-speaking territories believe that that officials working there should be able to respond in Catalan: 88.7% in Catalonia, 81.8% in the Catalan-speaking areas of Valencia, and 67.6% in the Balearic Islands. 

Plataforma per la Llengua said these figures in the Balearic Islands and Valencia were "surprising" because these territories have for years had governments "aligned with Spanish nationalism, a movement that has been characterized in recent years by the continued push for campaigns against the existence of a requirement for civil servants to know Catalan." 

EU language 

The 2023 InformeCAT also pointed out that 84% of Catalan speakers in Catalonia want Catalan to be an official language of the European Union. 

A large majority also believes that Catalan is useful for young people: 95.3% of inhabitants in Catalonia, 86.5% in the Catalan-speaking area of Valencia and 77.8% in the Balearic Islands. 

Plataforma per la Llengua expressed concern that courts in Catalonia ignore 81.3% of petitions requesting documentation in Catalan, and that almost 45% of Catalan speakers in Catalonia do not use Catalan to search on Google or YouTube. 

On the other hand, they welcomed the fact that more than 600 films and series in Catalan have recently been added to streaming platforms. 

More data revealed by the report is that Catalan is the usual language of only 5.1% of young people in the Barcelona district of Nou Barris, and it does not reach 50% in any of the city's districts.   

Ripollès is the Catalan county with the highest percentage of inhabitants who identify with Catalan only (95.2%), followed by Montsià (89.3%) and Baix Ebre (85.5 %). 

Baix Llobregat (29.3%), Vallès Occidental (30.5%) and Barcelonès (33%) are the counties where the lowest percentage of the population identify with Catalan only. 

The overall percentage of residents in Catalonia that identify solely with Catalan is 42.1%.