This Tuesday, the National Language Pact will be signed. Policies with broad political and social consensus in favor of Catalan are welcome, with millions of euros behind them to make them a reality. Because, for example, there cannot be thousands of newly arrived residents in Catalonia interested in learning Catalan who can't find a place nearby or a suitable time slot.
A language pact has real value because of what it promotes and symbolic value because of what it focuses on.
Everyone, especially the signatories, must be aware that the pact does not operate in the sterile vacuum of a laboratory. Aside from the conditions described, Catalan is a language under attack by the Spanish state, which, violating the written and unwritten agreements of the Transition, persecutes Catalan in schools throughout Catalan-speaking territories. Instead of being the object of special protection, as the Constitution states, Catalan is the object of widespread persecution because it continues to be taught in Spanish.
And all of this acts as a demobilizing agent for many Catalan speakers who either do not want more problems or no longer see the relationship between Catalan, freedom and progress, as the Catalans of the Transition did, and they continue to believe that bilingualism is only an option for Catalan speakers, and that the most polite, even worse, always unknown in Spanish, because Spanish speakers and illustrious expatriates are exempt, by divine right, from knowing the language of the country in which they live.
