Toilets in Catalan in the Balearic Islands
The Balearic Cultural Work (OCB) has had enough with collecting data from the Balearic Islands Health Service to prove that the Catalan language is not, and has never been, an impediment to filling nursing positions on these islands. This is important because the Popular Party and Marga Prohens's executive had insisted on saying the opposite. According to statements by the Balearic Government's Minister of Health, Manuela García, and the Vice President and Minister of Economy, Antoni Costa, Catalan was "an obstacle" to hiring staff in the Balearic Islands' public health system. They should resign or be dismissed for this. In any case, it is the Balearic Government's own data that proves them wrong.
In terms of retail, for 803 positions in the stabilization process when Catalan was a requirement, 568 candidates demonstrated the required Catalan knowledge, while 239 benefited from the two-year moratorium established by the executive branch of the Pacte de Progrés (Progress Pact) to be able to obtain the B2 level. In any case, no position was left unfilled for any reason related to the language. However, one of the first decisions of the current government (the PP, with the support of Vox) was to eliminate the Catalan requirement, arguing that it hindered the arrival of healthcare personnel. The dilemma between having a quality healthcare service or promoting one's own language ("Do you want doctors to cure you or to distinguish between unvoiced and voiced s's?") is, besides absurd, completely false. And besides being absurd and false, it constitutes an attack on the linguistic rights of the citizens of the Balearic Islands. For everyone, because rights belong to all of society, not just to one or another part. Using languages to disrupt social cohesion is irresponsible, and doing so from within self-governing institutions is indecent. (It must be said that the Health Workers for Language platform does great work defending citizens' linguistic rights.)
The confirmation of the IB-Salut data makes it clear that the elimination of the Catalan requirement in healthcare in the Balearic Islands is due to nothing other than ideological prejudice and the gross business dealings of the PP and Vox with Catalan as a bargaining chip. More broadly, it refutes one of the most repeated falsehoods of Spanish nationalism, which attempts to present linguistic diversity in general, and Catalan in particular, as an obstacle to the proper functioning of public life, and as a whim or imposition of "nationalists," as if they weren't the nationalists. Languages other than Spanish are not "co-official"; rather, they should be official languages on equal terms with Spanish, and must be recognized and promoted as such in all areas of the administration, as well as by politicians and institutions. Knowledge of and respect for linguistic diversity is one of the most important and urgent outstanding issues that Spain must address if it ever wants to achieve an acceptable democratic status.
