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I suppose you are aware of the news that the European Court of Human Rights has dismissed the lawsuit by parents of the Canet de Mar school against the ruling that ordered 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish.
What the Court has issued is not a ruling, it is almost a comment, but it is a very negative opinion for Catalan and for teaching in our language in our country. And it is negative because it goes beyond what Spanish nationalists, who are centric on Spanish, and who have harmed linguistic immersion as much as they could, normally say.
What the text says is that 25% of classes must be taught in Spanish because Catalonia is a bilingual region, in which there are two official languages, yes, in which one is a minority regional language and the other is a national and state language, and depriving students of education in Spanish, that is, in their national language, would break the unity of the Spanish educational system.
The preceding paragraph sets off all alarm bells of error. First, Catalonia is not a bilingual region. The native language of Catalonia is Catalan, and it is our national language, not Spanish. If Spanish is the language of many Catalans or residents in Catalonia, it is not because a meteorite fell or because God established it in the eleventh commandment (although it may seem so at times), but because for 300 years Spanish has been imposed as the language of Catalans, and where Philip V, Franco, Ciutadans, and company have not reached, demographics and immigration have arrived, which have created an asymmetry that, precisely, immersion seeks to correct. In other words, what would really discriminate against Spanish-speaking children is not being fully competent in Catalan, a language with which, if it were not for school, they would probably never come into contact. So they ban the language, they punish you at school if you speak it, you have to hear yourself say “Habla en cristiano” and it turns out that you are the one violating some rights. That they call this the European Court of Human Rights is a bad joke.
I say that this position has no legal consequences, but the Constitutional Court must rule on the 25% and this Strasbourg text does not help.
What Strasbourg says breaks the Transition pacts (for the Basques, money; for the Catalans, language) and is explained by an easy-to-understand reason: the positions of the most rabid Spanish nationalism are easier to defend in Europe when you have a state behind you, because what can I tell you that you don't know about the inequality of language. And now Strasbourg, instead of correcting the asymmetry, reinforces it.
Have no doubt that all these, like the fortunately disappeared Ciutadans or the self-proclaimed Convivència Cívica Catalana, work against the knowledge of Catalan because they identify in it the seed of the Catalan nation. And for their Spanish nationalist dreams, there is no greater threat.
Good morning.