Newspapers translated into Catalan and their readers: where are they headed?

I hadn't looked at it for years, and I thought it could be another barometer of how the health of Catalan, which worries us so much, is going. I'm talking about the proportion of copies in one language and another of newspapers that offer a translated edition. In the case ofThe Newspaper, ten years ago, 37.44% of its regular sales copies (at newsstands and through individual subscriptions) were in Catalan. Now, the figure is 35.95%: there is a decrease, but a rather small one. And, in fact, it has risen compared to five years ago, when the percentage was only 31.87%, although I would say that the figure is conditioned by the fact that it corresponds to Enric Hernández's last year as director, and it is possible that, among The note and other controversies, the most Catalanist reader would feel expelled. In the case of The Vanguard, it has gone from 42.9% to 42.0%. Once again, the decline is minimal.

But this doesn't mean we can just let go of the worry. Because if The Newspaper sold an average of 21,831 copies in Catalan in 2014; ten years later, it was only 4,606. As for The Vanguard, have fallen from 44,106 to 19,330. These are tremendous contractions, the result of the decline in paper usage worldwide. Have they migrated to the internet? Probably. However, while the paper editions of these titles were identical—and the only criticism could be that they were translations, imperfect by nature—on their respective websites, Spanish has an unequivocal predominance, and much content appears only in this language. Although a 40% share of readers in Catalan for paper seems reasonable, given surveys of language use, the figure reflects an increasingly reduced elitist and older consumption. In the digital undergrowth, there is certainly a decline, with Catalan editions less competitive, and the disproportion is gigantic, irreversible, and disturbing.