The only language that is lost is the one that is abandoned

Thirty years ago, CIEMEN and PEN Català launched the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights with the conviction that linguistic diversity is a heritage of humanity. Today, this conviction remains valid, because the situation has gone from worrying to alarming.

The data are clear and leave no room for doubt. Catalan is a language increasingly known but increasingly less used. Only 32.6% of the population of Catalonia uses it habitually, in free fall. This growing distance between knowledge and use is, today, the main symptom of a language in the process of minoritization.

In the rest of the Catalan Countries, the situation is no better, quite the contrary: the respective autonomous or departmental governments have made the persecution of the Catalan language one of the differentiating features of their political action, aggravated by the force of the extreme right.

This is not a matter of chance. It is the result of a combination of structural factors –legal inequality, pressure from global languages, demographic transformations– and a social inertia that too often leads us to abandon our own language at the first obstacle. Catalan is not disappearing: we are ceasing to speak it.

According to Unesco, a language disappears every two weeks. And in this context, thinking that Catalan is immune to this trend is, quite simply, irresponsible. Linguistic minoritization does not happen by spontaneous generation; it is the result of human action. And, in our case, the result of a premeditated policy over centuries of prohibition, repression, and discrimination, which has left its mark on the collective unconscious to the point of thinking that it is impolite to continue speaking Catalan when we speak to someone we don't know.

According to the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió, the main cause of discrimination affecting Catalans is linguistic discrimination. We only need to observe daily reality: one can live fully in Spanish or even in English in Barcelona, but not in Catalan. And if a language is not necessary for living, it eventually becomes dispensable.

Perhaps it is time to call things by their name: there is a linguistic conflict, yes, and as the late Isabel-Clara Simó said, Catalans are losing it. Conflicts are inherent to the human species, and what makes us civilized is our ability to resolve them non-violently, seeking justice. Linguistic justice, in this case. Because we are talking about linguistic rights, rights that speakers of minority languages do not have guaranteed today.

If we do not want Catalan to disappear, a paradigm shift is needed. We need much more ambitious public policies, sustained resources, and a real commitment from all administrations. But we also need to assume our responsibility as speakers.

We must fight linguistic inequality in an intersectional way, just as we do with other inequalities, such as social inequality, gender inequality, or inequality of origin. Not doing so would be dishonest with those who suffer from an ever-increasing discrimination.

Changing linguistic habits is not a symbolic gesture, it is a political action. Every conversation we have in Catalan is an assertion of rights, and every renunciation is a concession of rights.

But the defense of linguistic rights is not a specifically Catalan characteristic. In a globalized world, the defense of linguistic rights must also be global. That is why, from CIEMEN, together with PEN Català, we are promoting the updating of the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, adapted to a world that has profoundly changed due to new technologies, globalization, and increasing human mobility, which have generated new sociolinguistic realities.

We still have time. Defending Catalan is our contribution to the defense of linguistic diversity. And defending linguistic diversity is defending humanity.