One year of (the department of) Language Policy

In the last general policy debate in Parliament, President Salvador Illa said that the National Pact for Language is one of the most significant milestones his government has achieved. Illa did not say whether the creation of the Department of Language Policy is also a milestone; whether or not I consider it a milestone, it may be appropriate to attempt an assessment a year after the department's creation.

The first thing that can be said is that the new department is, in reality, merely an updated, regional ministry, of the former Secretariat of Language Policy. It's true that the department has more staff and (when funding is available) will have more resources, but its nature and scope of action are not essentially different from the old secretariat.

The department, like the secretariat, deals only with Catalan (and very secondarily with Occitan). All issues relating to other languages, which must also be managed, fall outside its purview. President Montilla advocated a "trilingual Catalonia," with English as the third language for all Catalans; the department, like the former secretariat, has no jurisdiction over the acquisition of English in the educational system, the dissemination of English in society, or the institutional uses of English. Currently, the Parliament of Catalonia is an "associated section" of the Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie; the department, like the former secretariat, also has no jurisdiction over the acquisition of French in the educational system, the dissemination of French in society, or the institutional uses of French. And so it is with any other language: the department, like the former secretariat, has no responsibility for the teaching of Arabic or Chinese. It is not the body that decides in which languages the complaint forms available at Mossos d'Esquadra police stations should be available, nor does it establish which languages should be interpreted on the 061 line or what the salary is.

Certainly, dealing "only" with Catalan is a huge task that could justify the existence of an entire department. But the point is that the Department of Language Policy is not the only department of the Catalan government that deals with Catalan. Many responsibilities for Catalan fall to other departments, as was already the case with the former secretariat. The minister responsible for the use of Catalan in schools is not the Minister of Language Policy, but the Minister of Education; the person who represents the Catalan side in the efforts to make Catalan an official language of the European institutions is not the Minister of Language Policy, but the Minister of European Union and External Action. Or to give a very specific example: the person who appeared before the Parliament's Health Committee on December 7, 2024, to report on the use of Catalan in the healthcare system was not the Minister of Language Policy, but the Minister of Health.

The elevation of the former secretariat to a department, therefore, has not made language policy much more transversal (perhaps the PSC's electoral proposal, which was to "return language policy to the Presidency of the Generalitat," was more interesting). Naturally, the fact that the Catalan safeguarding policy remains as fragmented as before does not condemn it to ineffectiveness. The question now needs to be asked, because Isla did not explain it, is whether the situation for Catalan has improved in this first year of his government's term. The prudent answer is that we still don't know: if a year is already too short a time, the mere five months that have passed since the signing of the National Pact for the Language are a mere breath. What is evident in some areas is that, in the dialectic between ambition and realism, the Pact was guilty of ambition. To give just one example: in his speech during the general policy debate, President Illa said that the official status of Catalan in Europe – one of the most ambitious measures of the Plan – "will end up happening", and on October 18th he urged his European socialist colleagues to defend it; the harsh reality is that in the General Affairs Council on October 21st the issue was again not discussed, which confirms that right now it is in a difficult position. "on a siding", as this newspaper has openly acknowledged. But yes: let's give it time and let's talk when the Pact has been implemented in the areas where realism hasn't yielded to ambition.