That each city council appoint a person responsible for leading language policy from a department or commissioner. That a plan to promote Catalan adapted to each town be implemented this term. That language clauses be incorporated into administrative contracts. Ensure compliance with language regulations and correct violations. And that City Hall employees and all its services respect the linguistic rights of citizens and can serve them in Catalan. These are the main objectives of the motion that the Government wants to be approved in all municipalities throughout Catalonia.

The signing of the National Language Pact, endowed with a very considerable sum of 255 million euros for this year, has put the situation of Catalan at the center of attention.

The National Pact for Language was approved this Tuesday After four years on the road, with a budget of 255 million for this year but without the expected political consensus. The Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, has led it from the beginning, first from the Esquerra government and now from the PSC government.

In a symbolic setting such as the headquarters of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, President Salvador Illa presided this Tuesday at noon over the signing of the long-awaited National Pact for Language, the roadmap that should guide the country's language policy until 2030. The objective is to promote the knowledge and social use of Catalan, which is in hours Only 32.6% of citizens speak it regularlyt, 14 points lower than 20 years ago. The Pact provides for a budget of 255 million euros dedicated to language policy by 2025, the highest amount ever allocated to language, and a minimum of 200 million euros annually. The entire Government attended the event, which was attended by a broad representation of society and symbolic figures such as former President Jordi Pujol, but with notable absences, especially those of Junts and the CUP.

The National Language Pact finally has a date. It will be presented at noon on Tuesday at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, an emblematic venue. It will be signed by the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), ERC (Republican Workers' Party), and Comuns (Comuns), along with the presence of the language organizations, employers' associations, and unions that have participated in the process. According to 3Cat, it will be endowed with 255 million euros.

The lack of Catalan language and literature teachers and, in general, of graduates in Catalan philology has set off alarm bells in recent years, to the point that 40% of substitutions were not covered last year. The Department of Education and the Consortium for Linguistic Normalization not only foresee a growing need for specialists to teach the language to adults in reception and secondary school classrooms, but also a significant number of retirements in the next decade, even among language planning technicians in the administration.

"The irreducible Gaul of Catalan no longer exists," says the Councillor for Catalan Language of Girona City Council, Núria Riquelme, referring to a city in which it seemed that Catalan was safe. "A Girona rai!", they told us. Faced with concern about the drift of the language throughout the country, and in view of the delay in the roadmap that should be the National Pact for Language, some Catalan municipalities have decided to deploy measures to reverse the decline of Catalan. The Minister for Language Policy, in fact, encouraged them to do so a few days ago in the First municipal meeting on language. He asked them for leadership to "relaunch the language policy at the local level" in the same way as the first democratic councils, which organised courses and events to promote Catalan. That was the embryo of the Consortium for Linguistic Normalisation, "the main architect of municipal language policy for many years", warned Francisco Xavier Vila. For the councillor, the problem is that municipal policy has been reduced for years to just these basic courses, perhaps "due to the speed of the changes that have occurred", he justified.