languages

On the same day, the Court re-affirmed its decision to keep its current Chairman in position despite his anti-Catalan public stance and having been a member of the governing People’s Party (PP) until 2011. On top of this, Catalan and Basque Members of the European Parliament from five different parties formally asked the European Commission to intervene against the politicisation of the Spanish Constitutional Court, stressing that EU democracies should have an independent judiciary. The Constitutional Court is the highest interpreter of Spain’s legislation, has to guarantee the respect of fundamental rights and acts as a referee between the different government levels and political actors. In this capacity, it ruled against the appeal presented by the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) against the law that abolished the requirement to know Catalan for working as a public servant in Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera, despite it being the local language.

The opposition has denounced “the insult to intelligence” and the “ridiculousness” of changing the official name of the Catalan language in Aragon. Catalan has been spoken in the eastern part of Aragon for almost a thousand years. In addition, the regional parliament has also changed the name of Aragonese, a minority language also spoken for many centuries in Aragon’s Pyrenean valleys. The People’s Party (PP) and a minority regional party called PAR have changed the law ruling Aragon’s official languages. Spanish is now considered the only official language in all Aragon and LAPAO (formerly Catalan) and LAPAPYP (Aragonese) are secondary languages. University experts have strongly criticised this decision which goes against all scientific criteria. From Catalonia, the situation is perceived as another attack on the Catalan language and an attempt to eradicate it from certain areas.

The Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal presented by one family against the Catalan Supreme Court’s decision adopted in March last year that validated the current public school model of linguistic immersion. The Spanish Supreme Court has stated that the Catalan Government does not have to change the entire Catalan school model, which has been in place since the early 1980s. However, it does have to consider individual petitions from families wanting to school their children in Spanish and make Spanish the language of instruction “in the proportion that the Catalan Government considers to be convenient” in “the school and class in which the offspring of the petitioner is being taught”.

The search engine giant adds thirteen languages to its speech recognition system, also including Basque and Galician. From this Friday, it will be possible to use the service on phones with the Android operating system to search in Catalan. With this addition, Google’s speech recognition software now supports 42 languages.

PEN International has presented at the Catalan Government’s Palace in Barcelona the Girona Manifesto on Linguistic Rights. Catalonia’s President regretted that the Catalan language still “suffers from the intolerance or belligerence of some bodies of the [Spanish] State”. The manifesto, which had its origins in the World Conference on Linguistic Rights held in Girona in 1996, aims to defend linguistic diversity throughout the world. The Manifesto has already been approved by the PEN General Assembly. The 10 point document has already been translated into 18 languages.

The President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, met with the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Brussels. Mas told the press that Schulz had stated he would “work hard” to enable the use of Catalan at plenary sessions. However, Schulz did not confirm neither “any date” nor can he “guarantee that he would achieve it, as it does not only depend on him”, explained Mas.

Despite being the 13th most widely spoken language in the European Union, Catalan is not an official EU language. Special agreements have been signed with all EU bodies to allow for the minimum use of Catalan; however, the European Parliament, representing EU citizens, is the only one where Catalan has been completely banned. The new Parliament’s President, the German Social-Democrat, Martin Schulz, is committed to allowing Catalan MEPs address the plenary in their native language. The measure will not represent any extra cost as many of the Spanish interpreters are Catalan, and can do both jobs.

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.

The use of the Catalan language is growing but it is clearly used less than Spanish in Catalonia. Some sectors are especially behind, such as judicial system, where only 14.5% of judicial sentences were written in Catalan.

The Spanish Constitutional Court has accepted to make a decision on the Spanish Government’s appeal against the Catalan law promoting the Occitan language in the Val d’Aran County, in the Pyrenees. The Val d’Aran has autonomy status within Catalonia, considering its historic links with the Occitan culture. It is the only place where Occitan has the status of preferred co-official language. Now, this status has been cancelled because of the Spanish Government’s appeal. The Catalan Minister for Culture considers the appeal “an attack against language diversity”.

A parliamentary motion has been approved, backing the Catalan linguistic immersion model at public schools. It was approved with the votes of all of the parliamentary groups except those from the People’s Party (PP) and the Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD). The motion received 192 “yes” votes and 148 “no” ones. It is the Spanish Parliament’s answer to the controversy over Spanish as language of instruction in Catalan public schools.

László T?kés, from the Hungarian minority in Romania and member of the European People’s Party, supports the “linguistic rights” of minorities in front of a European Union “sometimes too ignorant”. “I don’t like integration being replaced by assimilation”, he stated.

A study has found that the Catalan language is used less than Spanish in Catalonia. In addition, only 40% of foreigners are able to speak Catalan. In total 95% of Catalan residents understand the language, 77% know how to speak it and 60% can write in it. When it comes to Spanish almost 100% of residents can both read and write in it.

For the first time in the post Franco era, Catalan, Basque and Galician will be spoken at the Spanish Territorial High Chamber’s plenary sessions. Although the languages will still be banned in the Government’s control sessions at the Senate, from now on they will be allowed in the Senate’s regular plenary sessions. Although these languages are official in many parts of Spain, up till now, only the Spanish language was permitted to be used in the Senate. Using these other official languages in Spanish-level institutions like the Senate is an historic claim from a wide range of Catalan society.

The president of the Institute of Catalan Studies, Salvador Giner, responds, “Catalan is spoken by 10 million people in 4 different countries”.