Ciudadanos tries to end Catalan in schools after death

BrusselsCitizens has disappeared from the Parliament, from Congress and the European Parliament, but some of its former members and related entities continue to fight for the goals that the orange party defended in the institutions. In the last week alone, two associations close to Cs have managed to bring to the European Parliament an alleged linguistic discrimination against Spanish speakers living in Catalonia.

Without going any further, this Tuesday the European Parliament's Petitions Committee approved the debate next month on the petition presented by Impulso Ciudadano, whose president, José Domingo, was a member of the Catalan Parliament for Ciutadans. The Spanish-speaking entity's request is that the European Parliament debate "the need to put an end to the repressive language policy of monolingualism in Catalan and the exclusion of Spanish."

Specifically, Impulso Ciudadano considers the obligation for businesses to label in the native language of Catalonia to be contrary to European law. "The repression experienced by Catalan businesses who label in Spanish in Catalonia is contrary to the freedom of enterprise guaranteed in Article 16 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights," states the petition, to which ARA has had access. Thus, it denounces that in 2014 the Generalitat fined around 57 establishments, in 2015 around 70, and in 2016 around 100, although it does not cite where it obtains the data or present more up-to-date information.

These types of petitions often come to nothing, as the European Parliament receives so many that it feels overwhelmed. Thus, the Petitions Committee is tasked with filtering and debating or investigating the petitions it considers most important for the general interest of citizens. However, in the previous legislature, with the Popular Party's Dolors Montserrat at the helm of this Committee—she is now the First Vice-President—much of the discussion focused on the fight against discrimination. against Catalan, on ETA and, among others, the amnesty law. That's why the other parties often accused him of politically manipulating the institution to favor the interests of the PP.

In fact, this latest request from Impulso Ciudadano has managed to move forward thanks to the influence and votes of the PP. And, as is usual in these types of issues, it has also had the support of the far right: Patriots for Europe (the group of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's party), European Conservatives and Reformists (the group of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party), and the Europe of Sovereign Nations.

Sufficient linguistic immersion

This small victory for Impulso Ciudadano, however, is not the only one that organizations close to Ciudadanos have achieved this week in the European Parliament. The president of Escuela Bilingüe, Ana Losada, was received in the European Parliament by Dolors Montserrat and MEP Jana Toom, a Russian-speaking Estonian liberal who had always shown a good rapport with the Orange party. The visit coincided with the EU parliament's release of a report against language immersion a year ago, which progressive parties boycotted and only the European right and far right signed.

In this regard, Losada and Montserrat reiterated that Spanish-speaking students with special needs are "discriminated against" in Catalan schools for having to study in the country's native language, and they again urged European institutions to "force" the Generalitat to "comply with court rulings" and end language immersion.