The Department of Education has said that the court ruling this Monday against Catalan will not lead to any change in the day-to-day running of Catalan classrooms. But it has fallen short: in reality, it will not lead to any change in the day-to-day running of the Catalan language either, because the ruling in question is another chapter in the books that contain three centuries of prohibitions, persecutions, fines, and limitations of Catalan, dictated by Spain.

Between a Starbucks and a Yoga Studio Barcelona, ​​two blocks from the Raval and in front of thousands and thousands of tourists who walk through the streets surrounding Plaza Catalunya every day. In the middle of 2025 and after knowing that Catalan is already the habitual language of less than a third of the population, it seems almost impossible that in this part of the Catalan capital you can hear the expression "not understanding a draft".

Heads of 5,000 Catalan schools already know how they ought to respond to the ruling demanding 25% of classes be taught in Spanish. The Department of Education has sent them instructions via e-mail to inform them on how to enforce the decree passed on Monday in which the Government explicitly rejects the application of percentages in the use of languages in schools. This email to directors has a double goal: on the one hand, to reassure teachers and management teams and to try to protect them legally, since the Government would be responsible for the legality of every school's linguistic projects; on the other, to convince the Catalan High Court that it is not disobeying the ruling, but that the Catalan Government – albeit disregarding percentages – wishes to regulate the use of languages.

Only 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.

After a month and a half's deadlock in Parliament and ill-fated negotiations, Together for Catalonia (JxCat) opted for a final break with the 24 May agreement for the use of Catalan in schools, signed alongside ERC, PSC and En Comú. As reported at a press conference by party spokesman Josep Rius, the leadership has unanimously agreed "not to participate in any reform of the law on language policy". JxCat, which had already withdrawn from the pact shortly after it was announced arguing the support of pro-language organisations was needed, now concludes the reform does not enjoy sufficient political, educational and linguistic "consensus", and that it has not prevented Catalonia's High Court from "imposing" the "forced execution of the 25%-in-Spanish ruling", giving the Catalan government 15 days to enforce it.

Almost a month and a half after the unitary agreement for the use of Catalan in schools in response to the High Court ruling that established 25% of classes had to be in Spanish, no progress has been made. The reform of the linguistic policy law agreed by ERC, the PSC, En Comú and also JxCat has been postponed indefinitely. JxCat left the pact hours after it was signed, after it came under fire from associations for the defence of Catalan. The vote has since been postponed three times in parliament, in order to seek a broader consensus before taking it to the vote. Most recently it happened today: after parties decided to give themselves a further fifteen days to negotiate, the board of spokespersons decided to pull the reform from next week's agenda. And this time, according to parliamentary sources, no new deadline for the vote has been set.

Catalan Education minister Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray has sent a letter to Catalonia's High Court to inform it of how he plans to implement the sentence that forces 25% of classes in primary and secondary schools be in Spanish, given that this Friday was the last day to execute the ruling. In his letter, Cambray points out the measures that have been taken during these months to convince the Catalan High Court the ruling (which is already final and has cannot be appealed) is being complied with. First of all, Cambray adduces the agreement announced yesterday by ERC, PSC, JxCat and En Comú Podem in Parliament to modify the linguistic policy law and "update the guarantee of achievement of linguistic competence in accordance with the curriculum's new skill-based approach and the application of the instruments of control, assessment and improvement of the educational system" .

Broad consensus in favour of linguistic immersion. A recent CEO survey has shown 76% of the Catalans are in favour of defending the linguistic immersion model in schools. The support for immersion is even more widespread among Catalan speakers, since 95% of them defend it. So do 75% of those who speak Catalan and Spanish bilingually and 88% of speakers of other languages. On the other hand, it drops considerably when Spanish speakers are asked, since only 50% agree. This consensus with immersion, however, contrasts with the situation of Catalan: 78% of Catalan speakers consider that the situation of the language has worsened in recent years and, moreover, 68% of these believe that the language is under threat. The analysis is diametrically different if Spanish speakers are asked: 48% believe that Catalan has remained as it was and 22% that it is a threatened language.

The Education Department's draft of the future syllabus, to which ARA has had access, proposes to give "autonomy to schools" so that they can adapt language policy to their reality. The text proposes that each center decide "the criteria (...) for language learning (...) taking into account the linguistic composition of the student body and the sociolinguistic reality of the environment of each school". The objective is that schools pay more attention to the teaching of Catalan or Spanish depending on the use made by students and their families. This change is based on the fact that the balance between the two languages is not the same across the country. However, the goal will be the same for all the schools: "To finish compulsory education with the full mastery of Catalan and Spanish, and Occitan in Aran".

Exactly the same day that the Catalan Government passed a resolution in defence of linguistic immersion and announced that it would give "legal protection" to teachers and boards that defended Catalan of the "illegitimate attacks" of people or organisations against the Catalan school model, Catalonia's High Court has published a new ruling forcing a school to teach 25% of its classes in Spanish because one family asked for it. It is Institut Ramon Barbat, in Vila-seca: the magistrates consider that a student who in 2019-20 was doing 2nd ESO has the right, along with his classmates, to receive an education "that includes Spanish as a vehicular language in a reasonable proportion", which the court sets at 25% of teaching hours. The High Court thus overturns the school's linguistic project, This takes the tally of schools who hace been issued similar rulings to eight.

Twenty days after the ruling that set a minimum of 25% of classes in Spanish for a group of five-year-olds at the Escola Turó del Drac in Canet, a new ruling by the Catalan High Court sets the same percentage for the Escola Vora del Mar in Cubelles by partially accepting the complaint by a student's family which requested, as the family in Canet did, schooling in Catalan and Spanish in equal parts.

"Can it be tolerated that there are teachers with instructions not to let children go to the bathroom because they speak Spanish?". The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, continues to be immersed in a spiral of exaggeration about the situation of Catalan schools as a result of the Canet case. The right is using the first family that demanded their child receive 25% of their schooling in Spanish to attack the linguistic immersion model it has long had in its sights. This Friday, Casado decided to explain alleged situations that happen in Catalan schools where, according to him, there are teachers who do not let children who speak in Spanish go to the bathroom and who put stones in the backpacks of children who use this language: "Can we tolerate that children who speak Castilian in the break have stones put stones in their backpacks?"

Organisations against linguistic immersion have created a common front to expand precautionary measures setting a minimum 25% of teaching hours in Spanish at a school of Canet de Mar to other schools across Catalonia. A dozen organizations, including Societat Civil Catalana (SCC), S'ha Acabat and Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe de Catalunya (AEB), have presented a campaign called Escuela de Todos - Escola de Tothom to channel and process petitions by families who want to sue Catalan schools so that the Supreme Court establishing the 25% minimum is executed. The goal, however, is to put pressure on the Generalitat to put Spanish and Catalan on level footing as classroom languages, which the organisations believe is necessary following the ruling.

Building up hate speech should be a hate crime. For days we have been witnessing a campaign perfectly orchestrated by the political and media far right to convert two isolated tweets against a family in Canet who asked for their 5-year-old child to receive half of its schooling in Spanish (so far, the Catalan High court has decided a quarter should be in Spanish) in a relentless persecution that has come to be compared to that suffered by the Jews in Nazi Germany or to the South African apartheid. They are surely the two most profitable tweets, in terms of discursive manipulation, in the history of Spanish ultra-nationalism. The impunity with which this fiction of victimisation of a child and a family has been constructed is unprecedented. It doesn't matter that it doesn't stand the slightest scrutiny by facts: the school in Canet swiftly obeyed the ruling and has been very careful to isolate the boys and girls from the controversy. Moreover, for some years now in Catalonia there has been a trickle of similar cases in different schools which have not caused such commotion, despite the questioning they imply of the system of linguistic immersion, the fruit of broad social and political consensus, and applied with evident flexibility, not to say laxity.

The family of the five-year-old pupil at Canet de Mar's Turó del Drac school that demanded more classes in Spanish accused the Department of Education of "stoking" feelings of hatred among the population. In a letter written mixing Catalan and Spanish and spread by the Assembly for a Bilingual School, the entity that advises families who want more classes in Spanish for their children, the parents say that they do not want media attention and that the only thing they have done is to ask for compliance with the law and defend their rights. The family accuses the Catalan Government of lying when it assures that the current model of linguistic immersion is legal and considers that, as a result of the Supreme Court's ruling, 25% of classes ought to be in Spanish throughout Catalonia. "Don't be fooled," they say. They regret having suffered intimidation and threats, they are grateful for the solidarity, but they demand serenity and do not support any mobilisations.

For years education professionals have been demanding, almost begging, that the use of Catalan in schools stop being politicised, that teachers be given space to work and that their professionalism be trusted. Despite the persistent and stubborn malevolent propaganda of rampant Unionism, and despite the distortion of a justice system that is increasingly alien to the Catalan reality, schools have managed to preserve coexistence. They have worked to protect boys and girls from partisan bickering and to ensure that, beyond the media's noise, they will acquire the minimum skills in Catalan and Spanish within the framework of the linguistic immersion system. The language war that some have tried so hard and are still trying so hard to detonate has fortunately stayed clear of school, where immersion has been formally maintained. However, in practice, in tow with social change, it has been applied with evident flexibility, so that the use of Catalan has not only regressed in playgrounds but also in classrooms. In part – only in part – the school has ceased to be a linguistically compensatory redoubt, a role it had played in the 1980s and 1990s with the aim of giving Spanish-speakers the opportunity to become fully bilingual citizens, if they wanted to.

Every week there is some sort of row between coalition government partners in Catalonia. Before the wound opened by the negotiation of the Catalan and state budgets has had time to heal, ERC and JxCat are back at it over the defence of linguistic immersion in Catalan schools after a High Court decision forced a school in Canet to teach a quarter of classes in Spanish. It all began with speaker Laura Borràs (JxCat) suggesting Education minister Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray (ERC) tale over the school in Canet de Mar. Borràs's proposal, which would expose to the minister to possible legal action, has not been well received by ERC. Not so much because of the substance, which is not convincing either, but because of the manner in which its coalition partner has chosen to bring up the issue.

Those who for years have wanted to turn language into an element of confrontation are licking their lips again. Every time there is an argument, they come out on top. It doesn't matter that coexistence in a school and, therefore, children's education is at stake. The same goes for the fact that, despite the profound disagreement with the courts' round-up of linguistic immersion, backed by its educational and coexistence success, the schools directly affected, such as the Escola Turó del Drac in Canet de Mar, comply with the required provisions.

The Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Barcelona has decided to investigate the offensive and threatening messages received through social networks by the family of the five-year-old boy who asked for more classes in Spanish at the Escola Turó del Drac in Canet de Mar (Maresme). As advanced by El Mundo and confirmed by ACN, the association Hablamos Español and Vox initiated a lawsuit, and the Prosecutor's Office wants to check whether they constitute a crime of incitement to hatred or discrimination.

The recipe to respond to the "attack" on the Catalan school model is to "prioritise coexistence" in centres. This is what Catalan Education minister Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray said at the gates of the Escola Turó del Drac in Canet de Mar, in the Maresme, where he went to calm the waters over the huge controversy generated by Catalonia's High Court's ruling to force the school to teach 25% of classes in Spanish, after a single family complained.