Joaquim Arenas, architect of Catalan linguistic immersion, dies
The teacher and educator defended education in Catalan throughout his life.
Joaquim Arenas i Sampera (Mataró, 1938), considered the father of the Catalan school model, passed away early Saturday morning at the age of 87. The teacher and pedagogue, while coordinating the Catalan Language Teaching Delegation of Òmnium Cultural in the 1970s and leading its pedagogical team, promoted a Catalan teaching model for all children, which rejected other initiatives that used both languages in the same classroom. "The entire team believed that a country's school should be conducted in the country's language, and from there the concept arose." Catalan school in language and content"...which fostered the change of language in formal education in Catalonia," the teacher and educator stated in an interview. The project involved and engaged thousands of parents and, above all, teaching professionals. Arenas was head of the Catalan Language Teaching Service between 1983 and 2003 and rector. In 2023, he received the Creu de Sant Jordi (Cross of St. George) for his fight in favor of Catalan; in March 2022, the Plataforma per la Llengua (Platform for the Language) awarded him the Martí Gasull Special Jury Prize; and in October of the same year, he received the Medal of Honor from the Parliament of Catalonia. For Arenas, the language of formal education should be the language of the country, because it should educate citizens regardless of the students' family language and origin.
He promoted and wrote numerous works on language and education. Among them, the following stand out: Language immersion. Popular writings (1986), Catalan school, the name doesn't make the thing (1987), Catalonia, school and language (1987), Absence and recovery of the Catalan language in education in Catalonia (1989) and Language and education in Catalonia today (1990). Arenas also advised the governments of Bolivia (1991) and Guatemala (2000), as an expert, on the incorporation of indigenous languages into the school system.
"Today we say goodbye to Joaquim Arenas, one of the intellectual creators of linguistic immersion and the Catalan-language school model. In times of linguistic emergency, his legacy reminds us that school is key to the vitality of the language and also to guaranteeing rights, social cohesion, and identity," highlighted the president of Òmnium Cultural, Xavier Antich, on social media.