

That Toni Nadal, a sportsman close to Feijóo's PP, defended the unity of the language at the start of the party's national congress is something that may be sympathetic to some or unsympathetic to others, but it obviously has no value. It corroborates, if anything, the vocation that Toni Nadal has always shown to be a figure with his own voice, both in the circle of his nephew and former pupil, the tennis player Rafael. Rafa Christmas, as in the PP's entourage. Back in 2013, he stood in favor of the Catalan language against a PP government in the Balearic Islands led by José Ramón Bauzá. Nadal supported the green shirt movement, in defense of Catalan-language public schools.
This is fine, but nothing changes regarding the PP's ideas on the Catalan language, nor regarding the political stance taken on Christmas in Manacor. Just two or three weeks ago, the awarding of a noble title to the famous tennis player by King Felipe VI was made public: Rafa Nadal has accepted the title of Marquis of Levante de Mallorca., a name that—as lawyer Sebastià Frau has commented—neither the Spanish royal family nor any individual has the right to use without the permission of Mallorca's self-governing institutions. On the other hand, the most recent history of noble titles granted by the Spanish Crown in the Balearic Islands does not inspire optimism: it was the aforementioned Duke and Duchess of Palma, Cristina and Iñaki, who had to renounce the dukedom when he went to prison (she was spared) due to the Institute scandal.
As for the PP, the discomfort caused within the party by Toni Nadal's obvious statement (that Catalan is spoken in Mallorca, and that the unity of the Catalan language is a philological, not a political, issue) was notable. For two reasons: on the one hand, within the PP itself, many people hate the Catalan language and deny, precisely and against all reason, what Toni Nadal said; on the other, the PP's only chance of governing (in Spain, in the autonomous regions, or in most city councils) continues to be to do so hand in hand with Vox, which has its crusade against Catalan, and against linguistic diversity, as an ideological principle and an inalienable political objective.
If anyone wants to understand the PP's current language policies regarding Catalan, they might not need to pay attention to what they say at the party conference, but rather take the trouble to understand the politics in the Valencian Community and the Balearic Islands, where the PP governs with the support of Vox. The offensive against the language and against public schools is frontal in both communities, and not just against the language: this very Monday, in the Balearic Islands, the PP and Vox approved the construction of housing on rural land, a measure that could quickly disfigure Mallorca. The destruction wreaked by the nationalist right—on language, education, urban planning, and territorial issues—could be irreversible. Meanwhile, we are hearing opinions about whether Catalan and Mallorcan are the same language from authorities like Xavier García Albiol.