Feijóo urges Sánchez to act against "linguistic 'apartheid'" in Catalan classrooms

BarcelonaAlthough the new PP leader, the Galician Alberto Núñez Feijóo, had been more moderate on issues such as language immersion in Catalonia, this Thursday he has gone back to the terms of his predecessor, Pablo Casado, and claimed that in Catalan schools there is "a linguistic apartheid", words that Casado himself pronounced in December last year. In an interview with Onda Cero, Feijóo has accused the Spanish Government of being "the guarantor of a breach of the law" and has criticised the PSC for being complicit with the independence movement by signing the new law on Catalan in the classroom. This law received support from ERC, Junts, En Comú and the socialists. Feijóo believes the Spanish government should present an appeal before the Constitutional Court to suspend this decree.

"Where before there was an appeal, now there is an agreement," responded the Spanish government spokesperson minister, Isabel Rodríguez, who expressed hope that a deal will be reached with the Generalitat and the issue will not end up in court. According to Rodríguez, the Spanish government is making an "unprecedented effort to reach agreements and not generate conflicts" in the field of relations between public administrations. On the other hand, if Feijóo were president, Rodríguez said, he would file an appeal requesting the automatic suspension of the decree, he would study sanctioning schools that refuse to comply with the 25%-in-Castilian ruling and he would look at what responsibility can be attributed to Catalan Education minister Josep Gonzàlez Cambray.

However, Cambray does not see any risk of being barred from office. In declarations to Catalunya Ràdio, the Catalan ministerhas affirmed that head teachers will not face legal consequences and that he does not believe he will either. For this reason, he said, he is "ready to go as far as necessary".