Immersion system only applicable if there were options between languages, court says

Catalonia's High Court (TSJC) has ruled that the linguistic immersion system in schools could only be applied if there were an option between the two languages, Catalan and Spanish. 

The court says that this is not the case in Catalonia's current school model, and therefore the system "needs to respect the co-official languages and the student's rights to have a minimum education in Spanish."

This ruling comes after Catalonia's High Court established that at least one core subject must be taught in Spanish in three classrooms. 

The court also said that the presence of Spanish in Catalan schools affected by the ruling is "not enough" and "inappropriate."

However, the court is not planning on applying the ruling to the whole education system; just to the specific cases in which the families request schools to provide "effective and balanced" teaching in Spanish. 

Coinciding with this ruling, the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB) has announced that on Tuesday there were two new favorable rulings for schools in Vilanova del Vallès and Sant Esteve Sesrovires, in the Baix Llobregat county. 

Catalonia's education minister Anna Simó expressed her regret that "Catalonia's High Court enters the electoral campaign" and considers that the court has gone beyond its functions.

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. The territory 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.

Catalan speakers often switch to Spanish without hesitation when speaking with people who talk to them in Spanish, and some Catalan speakers even talk to other Catalan speakers in Spanish sometimes. 

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