The "learn Catalan!" sign has been removed from the Palau Robert after the controversy.

BarcelonaAn exhibition at the Palau Robert on critical thinking, disinformation, and hate speech has drawn a complaint from Plataforma per la Llengua (Platform for the Language) because it "stigmatizes Catalan speakers as alleged aggressors." In a space designed to resemble a gym changing room, next to the phrase "Let them go back to their country!" was another that read "Let them learn Catalan!" which could be interpreted as equating demanding language learning with racism or exclusion. According to Plataforma per la Llengua, it presented learning Catalan "with a negative and belligerent undertone, and even with hatred." The ICIP (International Catalan Institute for Peace), the organization behind the exhibition, admitted on Thursday afternoon that "the central message of the piece could be misinterpreted and that the text was unfortunate," and that they have since removed this section from the exhibition.

In the exhibition entitled PolsXtrems Your gym for training critical thinkingPromoted by ICIP and the General Directorate of Dissemination, and conceived by the creative studio Domestic Data Streamers, the installation recreates a gym training room, inviting visitors to exercise critical thinking, avoid polarization, and manage conflicts constructively. In one area, there is a changing room where racist, discriminatory, or controversial phrases are displayed on the lockers, one of them about the Catalan language. In addition to anti-immigrant phrases, there are also those directed against other stigmatized groups such as transgender people ("Trans people, get out!"), squatters ("Squatters, to jail!") and Muslims ("We must ban the veil!").

According to the ICIP, according to the ICIP, current events." The exhibition raises a real debate about the need to learn Catalan and the difficulty some groups of newcomers face in doing so. For the Platform, "introducing the Catalan language and its learning into these dichotomies is a completely inappropriate and unfair exercise" because, they affirm, "learning Catalan integrates, and associating it with discourses bordering on hate delegitimizes it as a collective good."

The letter the Platform sent to the ICIP recalls that Spanish is the language the Constitution mandates as a required language, insists on the precarious and weak status of Catalan usage, and warns of the "imposed ideological framework that, in a more Or, less subtly, it attacks and marginalizes Catalan: the roles of aggressor and victim, executioner and victim, are a recurring tactic of supremacist ideologies,” they state. In the statement released this Thursday by the ICIP, they also argued that “requesting the learning of one’s own language is not only legitimate in any society, but also entirely relevant.”