To make Catalan a second-class language
La 2 Cat was created with the aim of strengthening Catalan-language programming in the audiovisual landscape. Too often, precarious funding becomes a burden on the quality of the programs, but it is accepted for a higher reason: the health and future of the Catalan language, its natural transmission, and the guarantee of a shared public sphere for its speakers.
That's why programs like An afternoon with...where the presenter, Candela Peña, has serious difficulty speaking Catalan. The actress conducts informal interviews with friends and acquaintances while strolling through Barcelona. It's a program filmed in a great hurry, with only one shoe and one sandal on hand. The erratic street footage constantly reveals the technical aspects of the production. The camera and production crew are integrated into the shot, showing some of the incidents during filming: the actress's nerves, the cumbersome process of moving the equipment, the chaos of working in public spaces. The program's co-director, Bob Pop, appears and disappears from the conversations without any narrative logic. Candela Peña's friendly and spontaneous nature makes it somewhat comical and lends personality to the disarray.
However, what is disconcerting is her struggle to speak Catalan. In the last episode, the actress, born in Gavà, confessed to chef Raül Balam that while filming the show, she realized how difficult it was for her to speak Catalan and that she would take lessons later on. It's great that people learn it and speak it as best they can in a social context. In a media outlet, depending on the level of the program, the network should consider what message this obvious linguistic limitation conveys. Candela Peña not only demonstrates a lack of fluency, but she also constantly needs to resort to Spanish to achieve coherent communication and express herself with spontaneity and warmth. She makes it clear that she's uncomfortable saying what she wants to say, as if it bothers her. Catalan ends up seeming like an obstacle to communication, a difficult language that's a headache for those who want to speak to her. She makes an effort to speak Catalan with her guest, but when she has to address the crew, she does so in Spanish. Catalan, therefore, becomes a formality, a mandatory convention, or a job requirement, while the language useful for solving problems, the most practical for working, being more authentic, and making jokes is Spanish. Catalan becomes a second-class language and, on top of that, one imposed institutionally. You can speak it very poorly in the media, as if in a trance, and then demonstrate that you have another language, Spanish, well-spoken and fluent, highly effective communicatively and truly useful.
No Spanish channel (public or private) would ever accept a presenter with such poor Spanish. What's more, in Spain, many Catalan-speaking professionals resort to phonetics tutors to eliminate the accent that betrays their origin. Spanish must be perfect and sound genuine. Catalan-language television channels are not language academies, nor should they be considered second-rate platforms with low standards.