The PP prepares to promote Spanish in school following the report of an ERC councilor

BarcelonaThe use of Catalan does not stop retreating and many eyes are turning to the school, where the trend is not reversed despite the students' linguistic immersion. But immersion is also threatened: the courts have been accepting the demands of various entities and parties to increase the use of Spanish to 25% and, if the PP governs from November 29th, the populars' plan involves exporting the Galician model —which requires a minimum of 50% Spanish— to Catalan classrooms. And this despite the fact that this very week the mayor of Badalona and head of the PP list in Catalonia on Nov 29, Xavier García Albiol, acknowledged that there is “a very serious problem” due to the “retreat” of Catalan and asked for action to reverse the trend – words, on RTVE, which sparked the fury of various Spanish nationalist entities–. For the moment, the scheme with which the party leadership in Catalonia is working is inspired by the report that in 2018 was prepared, curiously, by an ERC minister: Josep Bargalló.

The report proposes an update of the language model to personalize the needs of schools according to their linguistic environment: reinforcing the presence of Spanish in Catalan-speaking environments and increasing the use of Catalan in Spanish-speaking areas. The Catalan populars bet on establishing the model of 25% of teaching hours in Spanish or Catalan and giving flexibility for the rest.

Sources from the PP consulted by this newspaper recall that, when he was Minister of Education, “Ernest Maragall also said that there was a need to reinforce Spanish in inland Catalonia and Catalan in the metropolitan area”. The crux of the matter, for the Catalan populars, is the defense of “flexibility within the acceptance of the 25% minimum with some autonomy for the schools”, which reinforces their commitment to bilingualism. And the Bargalló report opened that door, although the minister denied that his proposal undermined immersion.

Background

The leader of the PP in Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, has defended the “linguistic gradualism” and “linguistic conjunction” that he sees reflected in the report. “What Bargalló maintained was that students in the metropolitan area probably have more needs to reinforce Catalan, and in inland Catalonia more needs to reinforce Spanish. Just imagine what an anathema, what a savage thing he said, right?”, he said in the plenary session dedicated to the educational crisis a few weeks ago, making it clear that it was defended by a republican and not a falangist. “It could have been possible to reach an authentic consensus on the basis of that document, but they never desired it,” he added, in a refrain he has been repeating ever since. “The Bargalló report already said so” is a formula that has already become consolidated in the arguments of the Catalan PP.

For this reason, he has even lamented that “this Bargalló report was directly sent to the drawer after the hyperventilated reaction” of the independence movement. “It was a report that even we considered reasonable,” he said in December 2023. Words very similar to those used by the current Minister of Education, Esther Niubó, when she was only a PSC deputy in Parliament in the previous legislature, in 2021: “We would like to see linguistic projects that are truly adapted or differentiated, depending on the sociolinguistic reality of each center, as Minister Maragall or Minister Bargalló requested in their day; but in reality, it has not been so much that way.”

With the educational reform promoted in 2022 by ERC, Junts, the PSC, and Comuns, Catalan is shielded as the “normally used” vehicular language in the educational system, and the presence of Spanish is simply “curricular.” It is added that it is necessary for “all students to achieve oral and written mastery” of both Catalan and Spanish by following “exclusively pedagogical” criteria—with the objective of dodging court rulings. That is to say, without percentages to shield immersion, although it has points in common with Bargalló's approach. The result of the next general elections could intensify the linguistic war in Catalan schools.