"They don't pay me enough to learn Catalan!": shouted at the Girona airport security control

BarcelonaA passenger traveling from Girona - Costa Brava airport to Brussels last Wednesday was shouted at and reprimanded by a security control agent for asking for instructions in Catalan. According to what he explained to ARA and also stated in the complaint filed with Aena, after passing through the scanner, the man had to stop to go through the explosive substances control. The agent who was checking the luggage asked him "In what language?", to know how to give him the instructions. "Catalan", he said. That's when the shouts started. "I'm not a call center where you press five and I speak whatever language you want!", she told him. And she shouted towards the other security colleagues "They don't pay me enough to learn Catalan!", and other phrases of this kind, with an attitude that the other security colleagues supported.

"During the scanning, she stared at me and waited for me to answer," the man, who did not engage in provocation, explains to ARA. The other passengers at the control were foreigners and did not react. The man, who is Italian and has Catalan family, was so indignant that he immediately filed a formal complaint with Aena: "As an Italian citizen who speaks Catalan but does not speak Spanish very well, I simply replied that I speak Catalan," he explained in the complaint. The head of the Airport Services and Quality department replied that he "regrets the situation" he suffered, apologized, and assured that, once the case had been reviewed with the security company, they would take "the necessary measures" if required.

"I have flown many times to Girona airport and this has never happened to me before," says the man, who lives in Brussels and speaks Italian, English, Catalan, and Spanish. That's why the reaction caught him off guard and he arrived home angry and annoyed. "I felt that three or four people were against me – he laments –. I didn't intend to provoke, I had simply been speaking Catalan for two weeks, I was in Girona and she asked me for the language without specifying whether she was referring to Spanish or English," he says.

"He had never felt discriminated against for his language before. Now he knows what it is to be Catalan," says his Catalan partner with resignation.