Who is it attacking linguistic coexistence?

2 min
Façade of the Cerro del Dragón school in Canet

Against the reality of the Catalan school, where Spanish is already de facto the most used language in secondary schools, the courts continue to dictate sentences to protect it from a supposed marginalisation, ignoring the fact of the constant regression of Catalan both in the classrooms and in the corridors and courtyards, and of course also in society as a whole: we only have to remember the situation of film and TV. During the 1980s, immersion in Catalan at school achieved timid advances in the country's historical language's social use; soon, however, it had to be content with avoiding regression. And now not even this. The data is clear, and it is worrying for Catalan in the face of the pre-eminence of Spanish, both inside and outside the education system.

Despite this, the courts, urged on by an absolute minority instrumentalised by the Spanish nationalist right, and having absurdly become pedagogical experts, persist in ignoring this unequal health of the two languages, and in denying the evidence that all students in Catalonia finish their compulsory schooling with a knowledge of Spanish comparable to that of students in Spain as a whole. This insistence on creating a problem where there is none, this persecution of language immersion system as an imposition when it is the result of a broad social consensus in favour of positive discrimination, can only be explained by an allergic vision of the pluricultural nature of the State and by an animosity towards Catalan, whose future is now seriously compromised. Catalan society, in practice, is increasingly monolingual in Spanish.

But the worst of all is that the conjunction of a politicised justice system insensitive to the linguistic reality of Catalonia and the incendiary coalition of right-wing Spanish media and parties is poisoning school life, playing with children's education and creating artificial confrontations between families. You cannot compare two unfortunate tweets against parents who wanted more hours of Spanish at the Escola Turó del Drac in Canet – and who have obtained a favourable ruling that has effectively imposed 25% of teaching hours in this language, against the opinion of the majority of families and teachers – with the systematic campaign of misrepresentation that for years parties like Cs (which now again seeks its salvation in this dispute), the PP and Vox have been carrying out. Spanish public opinion is absolutely mediatised against a Catalan school life. If it were limited to what the main television channels and some Spanish newspapers say, it would believe that it is made up of anti-Spanish sectarian teachers and families. Nothing could be further from the truth. Linguistic tolerance presides over school communities, which only ask to be allowed to work without interference. The leader of the Catalan Socialists' Party Salvador Illa has asked this Thursday "to stop politicising" this issue and "let the professionals of the educational field do their job". The courts are contributing to politicise education and to break linguistic coexistence

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