“Catalanizing them is our responsibility”: a day at the Aula de Català in Salt

LeapEleven o'clock on a freezing Wednesday at the end of winter in the Onze de Setembre square in Salt. A sign with a white background and black squares imitates the shape of a school notebook: Aula de Català. Francesc Sendil, president of the Asociación Antic Gremi Revenedors, and Berta Solanes, deputy president, already have the shutters half up and the preparations for the Catalan class done. On the other side of the façade there is a mosque. "The premises are also ours, we have rented it for a long time. We have never had any problems," says Sendil.

The Aula is an example of self-management by civil society in the face of the linguistic emergency: all logistical and human resources are provided by the association. The classes are free and are offered at different times, always depending on the schedules of the volunteer teachers. They now have three groups operating since the end of October. "If we had more volunteers, we could open more groups," says Solanes.

The Aula invites group conversation in a horizontal way, in which teachers mingle with students. "It's the CAL method (Coordinadora de Asociaciones por la Lengua Catalana) – explains Sendil –, here we don't teach grammar, we simply converse in Catalan." The opening of the Aula de Català a Salt has been done without even the support of the municipal administration, of ERC.

Wednesday's students are women and mothers who come to the morning class when their children are at school. The teacher moderates the conversation. Hasania has a bit of trouble explaining that she is from Morocco and that she has a seven-year-old daughter, but with the help of the teachers she manages to get through it. It is a scene that is repeated with Bynta, who is Gambian and has come with her two-year-old daughter, Maimuna. Fatoumata has also come with her son, Arna, and explains that her other three children speak Mandingo and Catalan, the latter because they have learned it at school. Thanks to them, Fatoumata can improve it.

La Fatna is the oldest of all and the one who has been in Catalonia the longest. She arrived at the beginning of the 2000s and proudly tells us that her children have already flown, that the eldest daughter is a doctor, a radiologist, at Trueta, and that she studied medicine at the UdG. La Radya, Afaf and Nur, despite having arrived last, share the same willingness and enthusiasm as the rest to participate in the session. All three speak Arabic and also understand Amazigh. Bynta says that she also wants to learn Arabic, but Radya warns her that Catalan comes first: "You need it to go to the doctor, to the market and to buy bread."

Together, they go over the parts of the body, the city, the jobs, the times, the calendar, the holidays, among many other topics. They ask questions about Catalonia and Spain because they have heard things: what happened in 1714? And Francisco stops.

The Association of the Ancient Revenedors' Guild dates back three centuries, to 1447, and is one of the entities that has kept alive the spirit of resistance and preservation of the language and national heritage that it represents. They are in Salt because during the years of land inflation, in the late sixties and seventies, they were unable to invest in the capital and found the opportunity to do so in Salt.

Since then they have been open and available to the people of Salta, both natives and newcomers. The Aula de Català is an example of this provision and, given the data from the Survey of Language Uses, an essential initiative to incorporate new speakers, even if at a slow pace, which is the only possible for some immigrants.

"The neighbours who do not have Catalan as their language of origin must have opportunities to learn and speak it, Catalanising them is our responsibility," says Sendil. None of the alternatives is an option for them: they live in ghettos, they incorporate Castilian or they are deported.

In Catalonia there are people who fight to close mosques. On the other side of the same demarcation, there are those who have rolled up their sleeves so that next to the mosque there is a Aula de Català.