In a recent interview on TV3, Maria Teresa Cabré (president of the IEC) argued that, for Catalan to become a truly shared language, new approaches are needed. Among the ideas she proposed, one is particularly suggestive from the outset: hybridization. The proposal is clear: if Catalonia wants immigration to embrace Catalan, it is not enough to demand its learning; a good welcome is necessary, fostering a sense of belonging, and making real affection for the language possible.The idea, formulated like this, is difficult to reject. No society can aspire to turn its language into a common space if it is not capable of welcoming, recognizing, and incorporating. The problem, however, is not the goodness of the premise, but its insufficiency. The approach of hybridization emphasizes the relational and social dimension of the bond with the language, but it leaves in the background what is decisive today: the structural conditions in which immigrants, their descendants, and othered groups live.It is not enough to say that Catalan speakers must “permeabilize” themselves for there to be more interaction, more meeting, and, from there, more adherence to Catalan. This may work in some cases. But turning this intuition into a general answer is, at the very least, a simplification. It assumes that the distance between the language and a part of the population is, above all, a problem of lack of contact, when it is often the expression of a much deeper social fracture.In Catalonia, this fracture cannot be understood without racism. Not only in its explicit and xenophobic expression, but also in more diffuse, normalized, and difficult-to-identify forms, embedded in institutional practices, social expectations, collective imaginaries, and daily classifications. It is a racism that continues to operate, often without being recognized as such, even in spaces that think of themselves as committed to social justice. This blindness is not only moral: it is also epistemological, because it prevents understanding what happens with language in contexts of inequality. If immigrant and otherized people live more exposed to school, residential, and labor segregation, to discrimination in access to housing, to symbolic degradation in public representation, or to forms of selective secularism that fall mainly on certain religious groups, then the relationship with language cannot be thought of solely in terms of affective welcome.

The next elections in Catalonia are scheduled for May 2027, but the parties have already begun a campaign that starts well before the official calendar. Catalan politics, marked by collective frustration following the failure of the independence process, channels some of this discontent toward immigration, making it the focus of political debate. This construction of narratives shapes public perception long before the polls open, and the parties respond to the demands of a segment of the population calling for greater immigration control. Thus, the immigration debate becomes the axis around which the new boundaries of Catalan identity and social cohesion are projected and negotiated.

The controversy surrounding the theatrical performance Those Latinas at Barcelona City Hall has highlighted the complexity of linguistic coexistence and discrimination in Catalonia. Beyond the debate on the limits of humor and artistic freedom, this episode has highlighted the deep tensions surrounding language, integration, and structural racism. In a social context marked by collective frustration following the independence process, any issue related to language easily becomes a symbolic battleground, reflecting a growing sensitivity in Catalan society. In the work, presented during the Barcelona Observatory of Discrimination event, some sectors have accused him of Catalanophobia, while others defend it as a necessary critique of certain exclusionary attitudes.