WaterlooThere is political and social consensus that a roadmap is needed to protect and promote the use of Catalan. But the strategic tool that should serve this objective, the National Pact for Language, has had a complicated birth and is born lame in terms of political support. The Government will finally push it through this Tuesday with the support of its investiture partners, ERC and Comuns, but not from Junts or the CUP—nor any of the right-wing and far-right parties. There is more consensus in the social sphere, because Platform for Language and Òmnium will join the agreement, albeit with misgivings. On the other hand, the majority union in the education sector, USTEC, will not sign the pact.
"It's a good pact with ambitious measures," defended the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, in an interview on Monday. The ideas cafe from TVE. In fact, he criticized the Junts and Cuperos (Party of the Basque Country) for not "wanting to be" in the agreement: "I would like them to be, yes." The spokesperson for the PSC, Lluïsa Moret, added, defending the Pact as an "umbrella broad enough for everyone to feel comfortable." However, the arguments of the Junts and Cuperos for not signing the pact do not involve rejecting the instrument itself, but rather because they disagree with the political objective of the agreement.
This was verbalized, for example, this Monday by the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, in a press conference from Waterloo—without question time. The former president defended the "necessity" of the pact, but asked for patience in order to include the response to "two critical elements" for the language: the Constitutional Court's ruling on 25% of Spanish is taught in Catalan classrooms –which is yet to be known– and the official status of Catalan in the European Union, despite the initiative remaining stalled. Sources from Junts add—as do the CUP—that the pact needs to specify what the Catalan government will do if the Constitutional Court rejects Catalan. Pro-language organizations are already preparing for a ruling that would endorse 25% Spanish in schools. "We must all be, especially the first opposition party," Puigdemont stated.
The former president has questioned Salvador Illa's commitment to defending Catalan and, among other things, has criticized him for not always using it as president of the Generalitat. However, the leader of Junts has not ruled out future involvement; on the contrary. However, he has criticized the fact that the PSC, ERC, and the Comunes now want to sign it immediately just because of the "newspaper headline" or to "try to expose the opposition because it supposedly doesn't have enough firmness" in protecting the country's own language. These criticisms have been countered by the Republicans through their spokesperson, Isaac Albert: "The language is too important for the country to have certain attitudes." In this sense, he has defended this Pact as the instrument to "better respond" to a possible setback by the Constitutional Court to Catalan in schoolsThe Comuns (Communists) have echoed this sentiment, arguing that all Catalanist parties should be involved because it represents a broad agreement in defense of Catalan, "well-funded" to increase its social use, said the party's coordinator, Candela López.
The position of the entities
Both Òmnium and the Language Platform will sign the agreement. Both organizations defend in separate statements that it is a "first step" and a "good starting point" to address the language emergency facing the country, but warn that further work is needed. In a statement released Tuesday morning, Òmnium argues that the Pact's objectives are "ambitious" in the areas of "audiovisual, education, healthcare, digital, cultural technology, and economics," but emphasizes that the corresponding measures and budget allocation are still "insufficient" and "will have to be reviewed." The Platform also considers the document "unambitious" in matters such as funding. The pact will be allocated €255 million. The government agreement already stipulated that it should have a budget of €200 million in the first year.
The organization chaired by Xavier Antich does not want to describe the Pact as "insufficient," also due to the fact that it has not included Junts and the CUP (Catalan Workers' Union) and makes it clear that "it is up to the Catalan government" to ensure that they ultimately join the agreement. In response to criticism from both parties for the lack of specificity in the response to a new setback by the Constitutional Court (TC) regarding immersion, Òmnium emphasizes that the pact clearly states that Catalan must be the "normal vehicular language of the school linguistic model." In this sense, it warns that any "attempt" to dismantle the current model or accept "judicial interference to impose Spanish" in the classroom would be perceived by the organization as a "serious breach of the pact."
Another of the parties that will not sign the agreement is USTEC. The union will not sign the pact, considering it "very serious" that it has not been taken into account. "A national pact cannot be considered without genuine social and political consensus," the union states in a statement, adding that "without the voice of education workers, any proposal is weak." In this regard, it criticizes the pact for not including measures the union is demanding, such as reducing ratios, but is also "deeply concerned" that it provides "no clear response to possible court rulings that could once again call into question the Catalan school model": "We cannot talk about protecting the language while avoiding addressing its vulnerability."
"There's a convergence to screw Junts"
During the conference in Waterloo, Carles Puigdemont also addressed the situation of Junts, and did so with a touch of irony. The former president proclaimed the return of Convergència—his former party—but not precisely because he thinks Junts now embodies him in its political action. "Do you know where Convergència is? Screw Junts per Catalunya however and whenever possible," the leader of the regional government said. He asserted that he is now the target of all political parties and finds himself in the middle of a "pincer grip" imposed by the "ideological extremes."
At this point, he took a few digs at parties that lumped together the middle class with coastal apartments and those who speculate on housing, but above all, he focused on attacking the "populist" proposals of the far-right Catalan Alliance, one of Junts' main vote-snatchers . He accused them of proposing "easy recipes for complex dishes" and insisted that, given the complexity of issues such as immigration and security, it is necessary to use "the scalpel, not the chainsaw."
Sources from Junts assure that they are not shying away from any debate and, therefore, are putting on the table reforms to toughen the law against repeated offenses, improve employment, and, among other things, address the housing crisis. Junts wants to stem the flight of votes to Sílvia Orriols but wants to distance itself from what Aliança represents. That's why Puigdemont has argued that "what has made Catalanism stronger is humanism" and not approaches "of a Catholicism more typical of [Antonio María] Rouco Varela and National Catholicism."
![The leader of the Sant Jordi for Language 2025 demonstration arrives at the El Born Center for Culture and Memory.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 9"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
