A law against state monolingualism

The Republican, EH Bildu, EAJ-PNV, BNG, Comuns, Compromís, and Más per Mallorca groups have presented a bill to guarantee genuine multilingualism in Spain by correcting the monolingual bias of state institutions and ensuring citizens' effective right to communicate in any official language. This is a commitment made by the PSOE when the Congress of Deputies was constituted in August 2023, similar to promoting the institutionalization of Catalan in the EU, but implemented more slowly and with the advantage that it only depends on majorities in the Spanish Parliament.

Certainly, the Spanish Constitution affirms a principle of multilingualism, given that 40% of the population (more than 19 million people) live in territories with official languages other than Castilian. At the same time, however, it enshrines the supremacy of Castilian, which is official throughout the State and whose knowledge is imposed everywhere, something only the Bulgarian Constitution does. As if this were not enough, it refers to the Statutes of Autonomy for them to declare the official status of the other languages, which it does not even mention, and incorporates the mandate to protect linguistic diversity, which has not received special attention even though Spain has fortunately signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. This minimal protection is demonstrated, for example, by the lack of state regulations guaranteeing that all individuals can interact with central government bodies and public institutions in their chosen language with full legal validity and effectiveness, with the exception of the Congress of Deputies and the multilingual editions of the Official State Gazette (BOE), national identity cards, and driver's licenses. This, of course, highlights the weakness of the constitutional recognition of multilingualism in Spain, especially when compared to Belgium, Canada, or Switzerland, where all languages even have recognized status at the state level.

Aware of this situation, and after centuries of prohibitions and postponements, the 1979 Statute of Autonomy, in addition to declaring Catalan an official language, affirmed that it is the "native language of Catalonia." Until recently, this fact brought certain benefits, such as Catalan being indisputably the central focus of education and the language normally used by Catalan public administrations and media. With the state effectively absent, the safeguarding of multilingualism materialized through measures that developed the Statute, such as the 1983 Law on Language Normalization and the 1998 Law on Language Policy, whose essential content was incorporated into the 2006 Statute. This was all part of a broader effort to justify compliance with the recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe derived from the European Charter.

But this has not been enough for some time. The Constitutional Court's (TC) ruling on the Statute in 2010 marked a step backward towards a progressive deofficialization This meant the loss of the benefits of the notion of "native language." The Constitutional Court dismissed this notion as "the prevalence of one language over another" and imposed a standard of radical equality between Catalan and Spanish, considering Spanish to be the discriminated language. Although sociolinguistic data renders it unnecessary, this "inexcusable balance" between the two languages has since translated into carte blanche for some lower court judges to impose 25% Spanish instruction or to deny the requirement of knowing Catalan for certain public sector jobs under the pretext of upholding privilege. With this expression, the high court validated the Balearic law that overturned the Catalan requirement for civil servants such as doctors.

Leaving aside a possible and improbable constitutional reform, and a desirable and urgent overruling Or, given the doctrinal change of the Constitutional Court, there is no other remedy than to make laws like those that the Parliament approved in 2022 to protect the vehicular use of Catalan in education or like this omnibus law presented by the political forces that represent all territorial minorities in Congress.

The new proposal aims to reform up to 15 state regulations, seeking to eliminate the imbalances caused by the asymmetry of the Spanish linguistic model and the limited presence and promotion of linguistic diversity at the national level. For example, it proposes introducing a requirement in the judicial system for accessing judicial positions, as well as the full validity of judicial documents without translation. It also proposes the comprehensive adaptation of administrative procedures and digital platforms to all official languages. Cross-cutting linguistic criteria are incorporated into public procurement and key sectors such as consumer affairs, public safety, transportation, and audiovisual communication, not forgetting the educational sphere, where it establishes that the language of each territory will normally be the medium of instruction, with the goal of ensuring that students master all official languages by the end of basic education. These measures are aimed at strengthening equal opportunities and achieving balanced linguistic competence throughout the country.