language policy

Meritxell Serret: Spanish government should not "let their guard down"

Catalan is regular language of less than half young people in every district, with Nou Barris at 5%

Junts rejects proposed legislation change as 'it will not avoid 25% imposition of Spanish'

First meeting in February ahead of public consultation on way forward for Catalan

60.2% of families with one parent born outside Catalonia use Catalan with their children and 27.5% of natives with both parents born outside use Catalan with their children, according to data from 2013 coming from the Language Policy Report 2014 released this week. Ferran Mascarell, the Catalan Minister for Culture, said that "Catalan health remains" and said that "Catalan has passed a phase that was complicated because there have been significant demographic changes," along with technological changes and negative Spanish Government's policies. In Catalonia, the majority of the population 15 years and older claimed to understand, speak, read and write in Catalan: 94.3% understood, 80.4% could speak, 82.4% could read and 60.4% could write. Besides, while 48.1% of the population above 15 has a high level of Catalan in all language abilities, 26.6% reported important deficits in using or understanding the language.

The regional Government of Aragon, run by the People's Party (PP), has removed the last legal trace of the Catalan and Aragonese languages in the region. This action has provoked a civil and political movement in defence of both languages spoken by thousands of citizens in the Aragonese Pyrenees and in “la Franja” (the Strip), a narrow piece of land in the eastern part of the region, bordering Catalonia. Since 1999, the Aragonese Cultural Heritage Act recognised Catalan and Aragonese as “minority languages from Aragon” and as a “specially protected cultural wealth”. However, the regional Parliament, led by the People’s Party (PP) and the Regionalist Aragonese Party (PAR), passed a law that ends this protection and the denomination of "Catalan" and "Aragonese".  

Just 36.3% of Catalans have Catalan as their main language, according to a survey presented on Friday by the Catalan Ministry of Culture and the Catalan Institute of Statistics (Idescat). The survey examining language use in the population of 2013 found that 31% of the Catalan population had Catalan as their mother tongue and a slightly higher percentage usually converse in Catalan as their main language: 36.3%. Nonetheless, 55.1% of those surveyed reported having Spanish as their mother tongue, with 50.7% using Spanish as their main language. In 2003, 46% reported having Catalan as their main language, but this fell to 35.6% by 2008. Additionally, the report found that 94.3% of Catalans surveyed in 2013 could understand Catalan.

In 2012, 26.5% of the Catalans could have a conversation with someone in English, according to the latest survey on foreign languages issued by the Catalan Institute of Statistics (IDESCAT). The youngest population was also the most skilled, with 50.8% of teenagers aged 15-19 knowing the language. According to EU studies on bilingualism, Catalonia should offer a more positive context for English learning, due to having two main official languages, Catalan and Castilian (referred to as Spanish abroad). But, despite improving figures, the Catalans remain slightly behind the Spaniards and are still outdistanced by the Scandinavian leaders. Nevertheless, recent figures point towards a positive change in trend, sparked by a school system that fosters true bilingualism. Interestingly, Catalan currently is the minority language in Catalonia, following successive waves of immigration from other regions in Spain and Franco’s repression.

The language skills of Catalonia’s population to understand, read, speak and write in Catalan have reached record highs, according to a report from the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (Idescat) with data from 2011. That year, 95.2 % of the residents could understand Catalan, 79.1 % could read it, 73.2 % knew how to speak it, and 55.8 % knew how to write in this language. According to the Idescat figures, the foreign nationality population has registered the highest increases: 82.1 % of them stated they could understand Catalan in the 2011 survey, whereas, according to the previous census from 2001, only 61.1% of the foreign-born population had good language comprehension skills.

The Status Report on the Catalan Language 2010 shows an increase in the Catalan speaking population over the past ten years. This places Catalan on the list of the hundred most spoken languages in the world with 10 million speakers. However, the report claims that the scope of Catalan is being limited by state policies, its precarious presence in cultural products and the growing use of English in schools.

Spain’s Highest Court sentences on a case about 3 parents who wanted their children to be taught in Spanish at Catalan public schools. The decision breaks the principle of using Catalan as the language of instruction in Catalan schools. This model has been in place for the last 30 years and guarantees knowledge of both the Catalan and Spanish languages by all pupils, as exam records have been proving. Now, Spain’s Supreme Court is interpreting the Spanish Constitutional Court’s sentence from last June, which stated that Catalan was a teaching language but that Spanish should also be. The fear in Catalonia is that the country will split into 2 separated language communities and social groups will not understand Catalan.

Josep Huguet, the Catalan Minister for Innovation, Universities, and Businesses, said that the Catalan Government is preparing a decree-law that obligates university professors to prove their level of Catalan. Huguet argues that this is a measure of “equilibrium”, to ensure Catalan is used in the university.