–Higher up, hands up everyone, as if this were a robbery, ah!

Catalan language advocacy organizations, led by Òmnium and Platform for the Language, are preparing for a ruling by the Constitutional Court (CC) that would dismantle the legal response constructed during the previous term, with broad consensus, to prevent the imposition of a 25% quota for Spanish in schools. In 2022, during the Aragonese government, a decree-law was passed that prevented the application of language percentages in education (under the pro-independence majority at the time). A law, which in this case also received the support of the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and the Comuns (Comuns), established Catalan as the vehicular language and established the use of official languages in education. The law appears likely to pass the Constitutional Court, but not the decree-law, which was more explicit in rejecting the 25% quota and could give the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) the opportunity to continue its offensive.

The aspects that concern me most about education in Catalonia are the progressive loss of appeal of the teaching profession, the year-over-year increase in the budgets families dedicate to completing their children's schooling, and the transformation of school into a therapeutic institution. All three reinforce each other.

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.

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.

Against the reality of the Catalan school, where Spanish is already de facto the most used language in secondary schools, the courts continue to dictate sentences to protect it from a supposed marginalisation, ignoring the fact of the constant regression of Catalan both in the classrooms and in the corridors and courtyards, and of course also in society as a whole: we only have to remember the situation of film and TV. During the 1980s, immersion in Catalan at school achieved timid advances in the country's historical language's social use; soon, however, it had to be content with avoiding regression. And now not even this. The data is clear, and it is worrying for Catalan in the face of the pre-eminence of Spanish, both inside and outside the education system.