We read that twenty members of Parliament have signed up for the "voluntary language advice service to improve Catalan." Some newspapers inform us that three parties have opted out of the service, which was the brainchild of Parliament Speaker Josep Rull: Vox, the PP, and the Catalan Alliance. By party, there are eight members from Junts, five from the PSC, four from the CUP, two from ERC, and one from Comuns.
Putting Vox, the PP, and the Catalan Alliance in this case together is misleading, because their motivations are surely different. The PP has no interest, on the contrary, in speaking Catalan well or poorly because its leaders must believe that would cost them votes. Long gone are the days of MP Manolo Milián Mestre, who broke with the party due to its anti-Catalan bias. Some members of the party, like Dolors Montserrat, for example, make a titanic effort to speak Spanish everywhere (because they ooze unintentional Catalan). In the case of Vox, we can already see that some of its Catalan-speaking members make intentional mistakes in talk shows. They say "Germany", they say "Ukraine", they say "Algeria" and they say "The Rhône". They often expressly ask how Castilian proverbs and idioms, such as "God helps those who get up early.", to highlight its lack of practicality. If anyone tells them, quite naturally, that it could be translated as "Whoever gets up early makes flour," they are disappointed or ignore it. They didn't want to know; they were asking purely out of political ideology.
Orriols' motivation, on the other hand, I would say is different. He doesn't request the service because he doesn't need it, as anyone who has heard him speak will have attested. Therefore, it's a service that those who don't need it could request, and those who would need it don't want to request it. The PP and Vox complain that the same isn't done in Spanish. I agree, without setting a precedent. If responsible nutrition classes were given in schools, everyone could sign up, not just those who were overweight.
