The National Language Pact will be signed on Tuesday (without Juntos or the CUP)

BarcelonaThe National Language Pact finally has a date. It will be presented at noon on Tuesday at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, an emblematic venue. It will be signed by the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), ERC (Republican Workers' Party), and Comuns (Comuns), along with the presence of the language organizations, employers' associations, and unions that have participated in the process. According to 3Cat, it will be endowed with 255 million euros.

The pact began to take shape during Pere Aragonès's government in 2021, with the support of ERC (Republican Workers' Party) and Junts (Junts), but it could not be finalized during the last term. In 2024, it was one of the points of the agreement between ERC and the PSC for the investiture of Salvador Isla. The commitment was to have it ready within the first 100 days of government, but it was ultimately delayed because the goal was to find an agreement that would be as broad as possible at the political level, covering the entire parliamentary spectrum, which is presumed to have an interest in Catalan, something that was not achieved: in the end, Junts and the CUP will not sign the agreement. Nor, as expected, will the right-wing and far-right parties.

According to ARA, Junts will not sign it because the Government has not clarified what it will do if the Constitutional Court's ruling on the 25% Spanish language requirement in classrooms is a setback.how it is expected to happen in the case of the decree prohibiting percentages, and because the role of the Government in the official status of Catalan in Europe has not been specified. The CUP had already distanced itself from her because he considers it a "political operation to pacify the PSOE".

In fact, the Cuperos were no longer part of the agreement between the main parties –in that case Junts was there– to make a law that would respond to the ruling on the 25% of Castilian, since for the first time the Castilian language was introduced as a "curricular" in schools with the mandate that its vehicular use. As explained by AHORA, The anti-capitalist left refuses to sign the pact if this precept is not eliminated and it is not specified how to respond to the Constitutional Court: "The pact does not mention the judicial attacks against the Catalan school," lament sources from the CUP to ARA, who add that we are on the verge of "a new offensive with which it feels." "A true National Pact for Language must be signed against Spain and not by its hand," they conclude.

In statements to The supplement From Catalunya Ràdio, Esquerra MP Jordi Albert argued that the new language pact will help reverse the situation of Catalan, and downplayed the fact that Junts and the CUP (Catalan Left) are not present, nor are the PP or the far-right Vox and Aliança Catalana. "The country cannot wait for Junts," he simply stated, adding: "The Left is there, and Junts can always join the agreement when it deems it appropriate." Albert argued that, little by little, the pact could gain support, and insisted that the agreement "does not lose strength," although it does not include the opposition. "It would lose strength if we didn't have the organizations and civil society," Albert said.

Contrary to what Junts and the CUP think, according to Esquerra, the pact "will help" respond to the Constitutional Court's ruling: "The need for the pact is due to the situation of the language and also to face the challenges we face." Furthermore, they emphasized that the pact makes it clear that Catalan is the "vehicular" language and the "normal language of use" in the classroom.

Notice from the Platform for Language

As for the entities that participated in the drafting of the National Pact for the Language, they are expected to be present at the event at the Institute of Catalan Studies. Platform for the Language (PxL) will support the agreement, but already warns that it believes it should go "further."

"We have a mixed feeling," PxL president Òscar Escuder told ARA. "We think it's good that there is this social and political consensus around the language, and that it is clear that the administration is primarily responsible, but what has been put in writing is insufficient and has some skeptics about its enforcement," Escuder asserts. Platform downplays the fact that Junts and the CUP are not present at the signing, because they are doing so because the pact is short-lived and they have already "said they will support policies in favor of the language in Parliament": "I am not very worried, because what counts is not the photo, which has symbolic value, but what will be done after the photo."

255 million euros

The pact will be endowed with 255 million euros. The government agreement already stipulated that it should have a budget of 200 million euros in the first year. The objective of the pact is to outline future strategic lines to improve the situation of Catalan, which year after year is losing presence on the street and worsening results in the classroom. The first step was to "recover linguistic consensus" in order to implement new measures, including a new regulatory framework, said Francesc Xavier Vila, current Minister of Language Policy in the Isla government and former Secretary of Language Policy in the Aragonese government.

The content of the pact addresses the axes that the minister has already announced as important. Nine horizons are specified, including the growth of speakers, education, official status, adult learning, the world of work, cultural and communicative offerings, and contemporary challenges. Among the measures is the relaunch of the Consortium for Language Normalization: a "shock plan" has been announced with new courses, more exams and more agents offering to expand knowledge of the language among adults. There will also be an emphasis on improving Catalan among young people, both in the classroom (reception classrooms) and in leisure activities (audiovisual and reading), with 100 and 73 million participants, according to 3Cat. One of the priorities is to achieve official status for Catalan in Europe, which will be debated again on May 27.