He has a slight accent and a cadence that suggest he comes from very far away and that Catalan is not his mother tongue. Nevertheless, both the pronunciation and vocabulary of Alejandro González, a 25-year-old Hispanic-Colombian, are excellent. And even more so considering that he has never lived in Catalonia nor, for now, does he have any intention of settling there. He is not driven by need, nor obligation, nor even love, which are the factors that usually push someone to learn a language. In fact, it wasn't until he landed in Toulouse to study a master's degree four years ago that he became curious about the language and culture of a friend who introduced herself as "a Catalan from Barcelona".

The Catalan linguistic immersion model, which has weakened over the years and with social changes, is one of the fronts that needs to be reformulated to improve the situation of Catalan. When asked how, the Minister of Linguistic Policy points to Northern Catalonia. "La Bressola has an immersion model that, with 2% Catalan-speaking students, manages to make Catalan the language among equals without adult supervision. If this is possible in its context, it must be possible in other centers," he stated in the last interview with ARA. In Catalonia, only half of 6th graders always speak Catalan with teachers and only one in four always speaks Catalan when doing group work with classmates. Outside the classroom, 60% of students do not use Catalan with their peers. How do they manage at La Bressola to ensure students actually converse in Catalan in the classroom, playground, and dining hall?

From Catalonia, we observe with attention how Euskera has rejuvenated its speaker pyramid thanks to the school, but the language is far from being majority in the streets. Imanol Larrea is the director of the Soziolinguistika Klusterra, the research and revitalization center for Euskera that is financed with public and university funds and thanks to pro-language entities. A sociologist and doctor in communication from UPF, he is a great connoisseur of the Catalan reality – he lived in Catalonia from 2008 to 2015: he speaks Catalan perfectly – because he did his thesis here, worked in linguistic reception, and has collaborated with Catalan research groups. He now dedicates all his efforts to creating knowledge about Euskera to outline policies that will lift Basque out of a worrying stagnation. From June 17 to 20, he participates in the Forum on Linguistic Diversity, organized by Linguapax International, with dozens of experts to analyze the global linguistic diversity crisis and how to reverse it.

A passenger traveling from Girona - Costa Brava airport to Brussels last Wednesday was shouted at and reprimanded by a security control agent for asking for instructions in Catalan. According to what he explained to ARA and also stated in the complaint filed with Aena, after passing through the scanner, the man had to stop to go through the explosive substances control. The agent who was checking the luggage asked him "In what language?", to know how to give him the instructions. "Catalan", he said. That's when the shouts started. "I'm not a call center where you press five and I speak whatever language you want!", she told him. And she shouted towards the other security colleagues "They don't pay me enough to learn Catalan!", and other phrases of this kind, with an attitude that the other security colleagues supported.

One year after signing the National Language Pact, the Government has showcased the work done with an event at the Palau de la Generalitat before institutional representatives and entities that signed the agreement. After increasing Catalan learning for adults and promoting municipal language policy, two of the main milestones of this first year, President Salvador Illa has announced that, for the first time, an agreement has been reached with employers' associations and unions of the Social Dialogue Council for "a roadmap to promote Catalan in the workplace". "It is a very important step and a necessary milestone," said Illa, who has shown himself to be "confident, happy, and optimistic" about the future of Catalan. Illa also announced that the investment in language for the second year of the Pact will be 120 million, and specified two initiatives: 21 million to create more reception classrooms and 50 million to achieve greater presence in the digital world.

60% of Girona's residents use Catalan as their usual language in social relationships, alone or combined with Spanish. If we look at the priority use of Catalan in Girona, the figure drops to 48%, still above the national average, which is 42% of usual Catalan use including bilingual uses. If we look at exclusive uses, the gap remains: in Girona, only 39% of the population habitually speaks Catalan, and the Catalan average is 33%.

A study by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) analyzing one hundred international research papers on healthcare with linguistic discordance confirms that "not guaranteeing healthcare in the patients' language can be detrimental to the accuracy of diagnoses, the trust between doctor and patient, and the quality of care." According to scientific evidence, this situation particularly affects migrated individuals who do not know the country's language, but the research places special emphasis on the impact it has on the native population with a minority or minoritized language, such as Catalan, for which there are still no specific scientific studies.

A year has passed since the signing of the National Pact for Language, which was meant to mark a turning point in the language policies undertaken by the Generalitat de Catalunya, with the horizon of 2030. During this time, the main actors who were not present at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans meeting, such as Junts, the CUP, the USTEC, or the ANC, have not joined. However, municipal policy has been decisively activated, and over 200 town councils in the country have joined, taking on their role in revitalizing the language. A line of aid has been created so that they can offer Catalan courses. a line of aid so that they can offer Catalan courses.

A year has passed since the signing of the National Pact for Language, which was meant to mark a turning point in the linguistic policies undertaken by the Generalitat of Catalonia, with the horizon of 2030. In this time, the main agents who were not present at the Institut d’Estudis Catalans meeting, such as Junts, the CUP, USTEC, or the ANC, have not joined, but municipal policy has been decisively activated, and more than 200 town councils in the country have joined, assuming their role in promoting the language. A line of aid has been created so that they can offer Catalan courses.line of aid so that they can offer Catalan courses.

The consumption of digital content in Catalan has skyrocketed: in 2025, views of posts in Catalan have grown by 72% compared to the previous year. Consumption is even growing more than production, which increased but much less, by 31%, according to a study by Accent Obert that ARA has had access to. "Such massive growth is due to the fact that we are in a development process that still has no ceiling. A digital industry in Catalan is being born, and it is in a very clear boom," points out Albert Lloreta, producer and expert at Accent Obert. There are 1,260 active projects in Catalan that have achieved a total of 25 million followers. The number of influencers has grown, but what has grown above all is the continuity and intensity of dedication to digital projects.

Barcelona will reach a record number of places for adult Catalan learning from the next academic year: 35,500 places, five thousand more than are currently offered. The City Council announced this Monday an increase in the contribution to the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística of 1.2 million euros in structural funding, so that the council will contribute a total of 3.1 million euros per year to the entity that organizes official Catalan courses for adults.

An Arab-origin boy approaches a protester and, worried, asks him: "Are you against Saint George?". The protester does not hesitate for a second and responds with a resounding no. The boy, relieved, approves of the answer. This scene took place just as the demonstration in defense of Catalan, organized by Sant Jordi per la Llengua, was leaving Plaça de la Universitat in Barcelona. A protest that shouted that "without language there is no country", but which defended with tooth and nail, even with insults, a Saint George as a Catalan tradition in the face of voices that wanted to turn it into Book Day. "These imbeciles who want to take away even the saint's day of Saint George can go to hell", shouted Lluís Llach, president of the ANC, during the closing of the protest.

Last Saturday, 13,068 people took the written test to obtain the higher-level Catalan certificate (C2), the official accreditation that teachers, various grades of civil servants, and language professionals need to practice their work. The surprise, for some examinees, was that after taking a break they were able to review the first part of the exam, which assesses reading comprehension and written expression, accounts for 57% of the grade, and has been eliminatory for a few editions. Vilaweb has collected complaints from some users because they consider it an irregularity that lowers the exam's requirements and gives an advantage to the examinees.

The linguistic emergency is not solely a Catalan concern. According to the UN, a language disappears worldwide every two weeks, and 40% of the world's population does not have access to education in their own language. In this context, an initiative is being promoted from Catalonia that aims to contribute to saving linguistic diversity and protecting linguistic rights. CIEMEN and PEN Català have relaunched a new Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights that will update the one presented to UNESCO 30 years ago. The objective is to take advantage of the window of opportunity that opens with the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 2028.

As with epic adventures, it all started with a simple whatsapp: "I've had an idea," Pau Emili Muñoz wrote to four friends. He came from the activism of Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua and wanted to make it bigger. "We are tired of having to defend the language from the trenches, because we keep retreating a little. Taking the initiative is more exhausting but more rewarding. It's time to take a step forward," he argues.

Justice is one of the black spots of the language: only 14% of judges have a basic level of Catalan. This not only means that, by default, the linguistic choice of users in the courts is not respected, but also that the sentences written in Catalan are minimal, less than 7%, according to the radiography of Catalan in justice made public in 2022. The figures have never moved from the minimums. According to the latest Linguistic Uses Survey of 2023, only 25% used Catalan in justice bodies, the lowest percentage of all public administrations.

After walking through Catalonia, the monologue Crida als ocells de colors llampants —still on tour—, the communicator and humorist Òscar Andreu (Terrassa, 1975) turns that linguistic manifesto into Manual de defensa del català (Univers), a small book about practicing, understanding, and extending good linguistic habits. The co-director of La competència on RAC 1 and presenter of l'Està passant on TV3 explains his linguistic autobiography, a striptease that will make more than one blush.

You have just become the father of your first child, you register him at the Civil Registry and, when his documents arrive a month later, you discover that his surname has been Hispanized, and instead of 'Garcia' like yours, your son is called 'García'. This is the case of a Catalan family that Plataforma per la Llengua has reported after the Civil Registry has ignored the family's repeated requests to correct the error and re-register him with his father's surname, which appears without an accent on his ID, passport, and birth and marriage certificates. After several complaints and exhausting administrative channels, the family has now decided to resort to judicial action to ensure their son's documents bear his surname and not one imposed in Spanish. The organization assures that in the last five years it has received about twenty complaints for violation of linguistic rights at the Civil Registry.

Catalan is plummeting among young people in Barcelona. Only 17.8% of citizens between 15 and 34 years old primarily speak Catalan in their lives; one in four young people (25%) predominantly speak Catalan if we include bilinguals. The decline of Catalan over the last ten years is abrupt: in 2015, 37.7% of young people stated that Catalan was their everyday language, a figure that dropped to 28.4% in 2020. By 2025, it will fall another ten points. In other words, Catalan among young people in Barcelona has fallen twenty points in ten years. Three out of ten young people never speak it: there are more young people who never speak Catalan than young people who speak it regularly. Spanish is clearly the predominant language for conversations among young people, although 7% primarily use a third language, according to the 2025 Barcelona Youth Survey, conducted with 1,500 people aged 15 to 34 who have lived in the city for more than six months. Demographics largely explain these figures. Only 30% of young people have always lived in Barcelona, ​​while 43% have lived there for less than five years. 42% of young people are foreign nationals (six points higher than in 2020), and 55% have both parents of foreign origin. Catalan is never the predominant language among foreigners, who prefer Spanish and combinations with other languages. Looking at young people of Spanish nationality, Catalan is the predominant language for 30% of respondents.