The Department of Education has said that the court ruling this Monday against Catalan will not lead to any change in the day-to-day running of Catalan classrooms. But it has fallen short: in reality, it will not lead to any change in the day-to-day running of the Catalan language either, because the ruling in question is another chapter in the books that contain three centuries of prohibitions, persecutions, fines, and limitations of Catalan, dictated by Spain.
Likewise, it will not lead to any change in the day-to-day lives of Catalan speakers and what is now called user experience. Because no matter how much determination someone has to live in Catalan normally in Catalonia, the Valencian Country, and the Balearic Islands, there will always be a political party, a well-funded Spanish nationalist pressure group, a cosmopolitan pundit, a columnist with an inferiority complex, or a court ruling – redundancy aside – that will work so that Catalan, since it cannot be prohibited, is presented as a conflictive and burdensome language, and as a threat to the unidad de destino en lo universal. Now in schools, children are no longer threatened with having their mouths washed with soap if they speak Catalan, but with rulings like this, the systematic destruction of social self-esteem for the language is practiced.
As if all this were not enough, while the persecution continues, immersion clashes with demographics: how can anyone be immersed in a language that outside the classroom is heard little, very little, or never? And children, who are sponges and learn Catalan, in parallel learn the use value and the prestige or coolness that a language has. And this increasingly affects those who speak Catalan at home. Court rulings against Catalan act as a complement to the perfect storm.
