The great strength of Catalan, however

Amidst a general pessimism about the health of Catalan, it's also fair to highlight its strengths. And the main one is linguistic transmission, which is a key indicator for gauging the health of languages. Well, in the case of Catalan, the data indicate that many more people speak Catalan (either solely or in combination with Spanish) with their children (45%) than with their parents (28%). In other words, there are many people who, despite having Spanish as their family language, have decided to speak Catalan with their children. This fact, at a time when a significant contingent of newly arrived population speaking other languages has arrived in the country, is fundamental.

We all know family stories that exemplify these data. We have chosen two: that of the screenwriter Eduard Sola and that of the cartoonist Màriam Ben-Arab, whose father is Tunisian. In the case of Eduard Sola, it was his parents who made the decision to speak Catalan with his children, so there was a generational divide in the family: the older ones spoke Spanish as their primary language, and the younger ones spoke Catalan. But all within a framework of absolute normality and naturalness.

What lessons can we draw? Well, that generation that had come from other parts of Spain understood that Catalan was the language they should educate their children in to facilitate their integration and give them more tools to progress, and they saw the transmission of Catalan as a way of sealing their commitment to the land that had welcomed them and given them an opportunity to succeed. It's not easy to make the decision to speak a language different from the one you were raised in with your child, which is why it's necessary to value this step taken by many families as one of the reasons that explain the extreme resilience that the Catalan language has demonstrated over the centuries.

The question is whether the same circumstances exist now as then for newcomers to take the same step. And the answer is that circumstances have changed, but the mechanisms that foster language transmission are essentially the same. This goal can be achieved in many ways, but the reality now is different from that of the 1960s and 1970s. Many children speak a language at home that is neither Catalan nor Spanish, and experience shows that they will value Catalan to the extent that we natives also value their language and culture of origin. The multilingual environment is here to stay, and the challenge is to ensure that Catalan continues to be the language that unites us as a country and as a society.