Government signs decree rejecting "percentages" of classes in Spanish

BarcelonaOnly one day before the deadline given by the Catalan High Court expired, the Catalan government has passed a bill to respond to the sentence that establishes that 25% of classes must be taught in Spanish.

As advanced by ARA, the bill rejects percentages in education in Catalonia, despite the court order. Specifically, the decree establishes "the non-application of numerical parameters, proportions or percentages in teaching and the use of languages". It also contains a second noteworthy aspect, which is that the Education Department will be in charge of "validating linguistic projects [presented by each school] in a period not exceeding 30 days". This means that the department led by Josep González-Cambray "will take responsibility for the legality" of the linguistic projects. In short, the Department will answer to the judge if teaching exclusively in Catalan is found to be in contempt of court.

The government's original idea was to approve this decree jointly and, at the same time, for the Parliament to approve a law on the same subject. The law, however, will still have to wait a few more days because Vox, Cs and PP challenged it in the Statutory Guarantees Council, which will take a few days to emit a ruling which, in any case, is not binding. The decree will come into force when it is published in the Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya (DOGC), but it will also have be ratified by the Catalan Parliament. The Catalan government is confident it will prosper thanks to the votes of coalition partners ERC and Junts, and the support of En Comú.

Catalan as classroom language and Spanish as curricular language: a four-way agreement to respond to the High Court