'El Mundo' and the great linguistic oppression of the Tour

The yellow jersey of linguistic hypocrisy is put on for another day The World, with the article: “Illa imposes Catalan at the Tour: ‘It must be your initial language.’”. They are referring to the Volunteer Manual drafted by the Generalitat, which explains that Catalan should be used in the first instance. This is presented by the newspaper with the usual coercive verbs: “imposes,” “forces,” and even mentions the “linguistic doctrine of marginalizing Spanish.” One only needs to walk around the city for ten minutes to know that if there is a language being sidelined, it is not Bertín Osborne’s, but the newspaper applies the same policy as with immersion in schools, which is to maliciously confuse what a document says with harsh reality. Because the abstract volunteer who reads the manual will end up doing what their personal triumph arch dictates, since Salvador Illa – as they personalize it in the headline, we will do so here too – will not be chasing after these collaborators to check if they have prioritized Catalan. Furthermore, as is finally recognized The World in the midst of his convoluted prose of grievances, “the Generalitat grants volunteers the possibility of 'adapting to the interlocutor's language'”. Big fans of the use of grant as a verb, in this sentence, full of intention.

I suppose that since Illa sounds like an active member of the PSOE who hasn't been absorbed yet, the newspaper takes any excuse to attack him, lest he end up being the fuse that replaces Pedro Sánchez. But portraying him as a Torquemada of Catalan, persecuting poor volunteers on behalf of a little manual with no connection beyond a plea, is one of the most daring fantasies the newspaper has launched lately. Advantages of selling only 6% of your copies in Catalonia: you can make up about a The Handmaid's Tale linguistic particular and it comes to you for free.