Within the framework of a constellation of paranormal sociolinguistic phenomena, on June 26, the Alicante City Council plenary session approved urging the Valencian Parliament to modify the linguistic zoning established by the Law on the Use and Teaching of Valencian (LUEV, 1983). The zoning in question—in an unfortunate formulation, it has been said—divided the Valencian Community into two areas of linguistic predominance based on historical criteria. It should be noted that this criterion—hotly debated at the time—had less to do with the demolinguistic situation of the 1980s than with the predominant language of the 13th-century settlers. In this way, a zone of (historical) Valencian-speaking linguistic predominance and a Spanish-speaking zone were defined, which proposed a different management of linguistic rights and duties based on the location of Valencian citizens. At this point, I can't help but say to myself that this approach has repeatedly become a thorn in the side of the envisioned linguistic normalization.

Let me start at the end, so that rhetoric does not dilute the message: we urgently need a great social pact for the revitalization of the Catalan language. The unborn National Pact for Language proposed in the previous legislature responded to an institutional call to work, hand in hand with civil society, to improve the comfort of Catalan in its historical ecosystem. The expert document – which I had the honor of coordinating with Isidor Marí – already put on the table the weaknesses of a language that has not succeeded in the difficult path to normality, but it also emphasized the strengths, a vector that we must not ignore if we want to achieve a city adhesion.