Alicante and Valencian: the tip of the iceberg

Within the framework of a constellation of paranormal sociolinguistic phenomena, on June 26, the Alicante City Council plenary session approved urging the Valencian Parliament to modify the linguistic zoning established by the Law on the Use and Teaching of Valencian (LUEV, 1983). The zoning in question—in an unfortunate formulation, it has been said—divided the Valencian Community into two areas of linguistic predominance based on historical criteria. It should be noted that this criterion—hotly debated at the time—had less to do with the demolinguistic situation of the 1980s than with the predominant language of the 13th-century settlers. In this way, a zone of (historical) Valencian-speaking linguistic predominance and a Spanish-speaking zone were defined, which proposed a different management of linguistic rights and duties based on the location of Valencian citizens. At this point, I can't help but say to myself that this approach has repeatedly become a thorn in the side of the envisioned linguistic normalization.

Be that as it may, the fact is that the fifth time was the charm, and the Popular Party has bowed to Vox's pressure. Consequently, the request to relocate the city of Alicante, now in the Spanish-speaking region, is already underway. According to PP councilor M. Carmen de España, this should reflect the statistical reality in the law... And, according to Vox councilors, it corrects an imbalance (!). In the background of so much ignominious rhetoric, there is the need for the PP to approve the economic and financial plan, which requires the participation of a partner, Vox, determined to ad infinitum to erase the state's linguistic diversity from a monolingual ideology that takes us back to a time of unfortunate memory.

To me, correcting the aforementioned imbalance would certainly have been a better idea, with affirmative action measures that would effectively bilingualize the Alicante population and encourage the use of the language that had historically dominated the city. This is what it means to imagine a society in which bilingualism isn't just a matter for one of the groups present. However, it seems that the instigators of the proposal have a different communicative dynamic for society in mind. A dynamic where, at most, the use of Valencian among indigenous people is "graciously tolerated" and the freedom not to learn it outside of one's in-group is demanded. An idea, let's not forget, that overlooks the fact that the freedom demanded prevents Valencian speakers from using their language as much as they want.

If the kind reader will allow me to provide some context on the subject, I would like to refer to the historical process of the Castilianization of Valencian society. It dates back to the 16th century and has taken different directions in relation to its social scope. I won't dwell on it, but I will say that before entering the 20th century, the process in question, while experiencing a significant qualitative increase, quantitatively affected a small number of individuals. The ideologies disseminated during the 20th-century dictatorships, on the other hand, drove significant processes of linguistic defection, and the Spanish-speaking migrations of the third quarter of the 20th century did the rest.

The new territorial planning of the autonomous state enabled various planning interventions. The person signing these documents presented the analysis of two periods: a period linguistic underplanning with the left in power between 1983 and 1995 followed by twenty years of linguistic counterplanning with the ruling right (1995-2015). In both cases, the administration's intervention proved to be a dead end when it came to bringing the language back to the state of normality it deserved. In recent years, we could characterize them as a pair of new stages, which collide again with regard to the desired linguistic horizon: the Botánico stage, in my opinion, has represented a missed opportunity based on a misreading of a particularly complicated communicative context for minority languages; the other stage, which began with the change of government in 2023, leads us to a new linguistic counter-planning, explicit and uninhibited.

The paranormal phenomena I alluded to at the beginning of the article have strained society, a segment of which is astonished by the launch of the process of liquidating a language that, according to data from the 2021 SIES survey, is in a true state of linguistic emergency. I am referring to measures such as the promulgation of the Law on Educational Freedom, the residualization of the Valencian-language communication ecosystem, the marginalization of Valencian-language culture in institutional circles, etc. And let us not lose sight of the conflictualization of normative management (AVL) and, ultimately, of the unity of the language.

The offensive will only get worse. Regarding the alteration of the embryonic historical zoning, Vox has already stated that it will promote new petitions in the municipalities where it has influence. This is, therefore, the tip of the iceberg of an offensive that the linguistic community as a whole would be wise not to underestimate. What is happening in Alicante—what is happening in the Valencian Community, in short—is a torpedo right in the waterline of the Catalan language. The issue should therefore be addressed independently of where the aggression is taking place. From Catalonia, it is time to reread horizon 8 of the National Pact for Language. It is entitled "A shared language equipped for contemporary challenges." Let's see, then, what can be done.