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.

The latest figures on young people's language use revealed two contradictory realities. On the one hand, according to l'Survey of Language Uses of the Population 2023Those aged 15 to 29 and those over 65 who report having Catalan as their family language (38%, alone or with Spanish) are the groups in which Catalan is most prevalent. On the other hand, historical trends show a clear decline in the social use of Catalan among young people, a worrying trend that, according to Esteve Valls, a sociolinguist at the University of Barcelona, ​​could jeopardize the transmission of the language to their children in the future.

"We must save the current situation of Catalan," says Núria Graner. She even changed her major and this year began studying philology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) after seeing the Tria Filologia campaign and realizing the state of Catalan in Barcelona: "They don't even understand you in Catalan, they look down on you if you speak it, and the Language Policy Law isn't being enforced." Beside her is Aniol Torreblanca, a fellow student at the UAB, who has chosen the same path: "I speak Catalan with everyone and correct them if they make a mistake, affectionately, because I believe we must take care of Catalan and spread it," he says, adding that his degree will give him the knowledge and authority to do so. Further afield, Arnau Trilla, who studies at the University of Lleida, says: "I was already interested in the humanities and the Catalan language, but given the decline in its use in urban areas, I wanted to help address this and promote Catalan among young people, who are losing it." These are three of the students who have received the first scholarship to study Catalan philology from the Generalitat (Catalan government), an initiative that aims to attract more students and graduates in Catalan.

With the newspaper headlines highlighting Catalan as the great claim of the Diada, the ARA interviews Marta Salicrú (Barcelona, ​​​​1980) two months after being appointed as the first Commissioner for Social Use of Catalan of Barcelona City Council. A journalist by profession, and for six years director of Radio Primavera Sound, she says the assignment took her by surprise but she couldn't say no: "I'm a hard worker and so far I've stepped out of every project I've been involved with. I'm certain that I'm going to work hard and it will serve what articulates my Catalan identity. She's wearing a Salsa Romesco T-shirt with "seny i rauxa" printed on it.

That the habitual use of Catalan is declining we already know it through surveys, and that there are speakers reluctant to learn it, we see it with the controversiesBut how can ordinary citizens contribute to changing the linguistic landscape in their daily lives? One of the most harmful habits regarding language is linguistic convergence in Spanish; that is, switching languages by default, without anyone having asked. This is a widespread habit (only one in four regular Catalan speakers) maintains Catalan when someone addresses them in Spanish) and is a phenomenon that contributes - on the initiative of Catalan speakers - to the submission and residualization of Catalan.

The journalist Marta Salicrú, who was previously the director of Radio Primavera Sound, has been chosen as the first language commissioner for Barcelona City Council, according to ARA. She will report directly to Mayor Jaume Collboni. This position emerges from the stability pact between the PSC and ERC, in which they agreed to create three commissioners in the areas of tourism (where José Donaire has been appointed), rehabilitation, and language policy.

To the historical data of the old problem (centuries of Catalan prohibitions, fascist victory in the Civil War, forty years of dictatorship without schooling in Catalan that coincides with the arrival of a large wave of Spanish-speaking migration), new ones are added: in democracy, Catalan continues to have a lower legal status than Spanish, the global situation and the independence process are failing.

The company is called Teatro Sin Papeles, which already tells you that those who are part of it "act like dissidents." The kind, controlled, and necessary measure of dissent. Yes, they're called Sin Papeles, but undocumented the administration is not billed, and this work, which has raised dust and has forced several councilors to apologize (I believe them), it was a commission from Barcelona City Council.

Barcelona City Council apologized this Friday for the crisis generated by a performance against racial, gender, origin, and class discrimination that discriminated against Catalan and its speakers. This paradox occurred on Tuesday, as if that weren't enough, at the presentation of the Barcelona Discrimination Observatory 2024 Report, which showed that racism, gender, health, LGBTQ+ orientation, and, fifthly, the Catalan language are the main reasons for discrimination. At a public event held by City Council, the amateur company Teatro Sin Papeles, made up of migrant women of Latin American origin, was given space to perform a fragment of their show. Those LatinasIt turned out that the fragment ridiculed Catalan speakers and denounced—in Spanish—situations such as doctors speaking Catalan, jobs requiring the country's language, and the use of Catalan in reception centers. It also included the fact that they weren't hired despite having completed "level C2 of Catalan" because they weren't native speakers.

"My Instagram account has exploded. Friends tell me they want to be my agents," laughs Finn Higgins, an Australian from Melbourne. The 24-year-old arrived in Barcelona less than two years ago to study a master's degree in landscape architecture at the ETSAB (UPC). He learned Catalan and always speaks to those around him. "I learned Catalan with the friends From the floor, with social networks and Carles Porta, I'm hooked on Crimes", he says.

The eight major Catalan-language advocacy organizations have joined forces to promote #repte21dies across the country. "It's about maintaining Catalan for 21 days, speaking only Catalan everywhere and with everyone: will you be able to do it?" asks activist Txe Arana at the initiative's presentation. The challenge will begin on May 12 and run until June 1.

It's immediately clear that Ridha Ben-Arab (Tunisia, 1948) is a charismatic man. He's an artist, painter, and ceramist. He discovered Catalan existed in his first class. "I was a foreigner, but I didn't have to speak Spanish; I spoke Arabic, French, and English," he recalls.

Catalan is the language that Catalan speakers pass on from parents to children, but it's also the language that thousands of people who had spoken another language at home, whether Spanish, Urdu, or Turkish, have spoken to their children. Only 28-30% of Catalans spoke Catalan to their grandparents and parents, while up to 45% speak Catalan to their children—that is, there's a difference of six points from mother to child, or twelve if we include bilingual speakers. This is one of the positive data points. from the latest survey of linguistic uses of the populationThis figure contrasts with what happens with Spanish within the family: 55% of citizens speak Spanish with grandparents and parents, but the percentage drops to 37% with their children—or 47% if we include mixed uses. It's worth noting that 20% of households today declare themselves multilingual, if we look at the mix of languages spoken to their children, a clearly upward trend.

When the screenwriter Eduard Sola won the Gaudí by House on fire He remembered his humble origins, "proudly charnego." And when he won the Goya, he dedicated it to the "super mothers" who, like his own, have sacrificed everything for their children. "Mom, that's for you. I love you so much," he said in Catalan. Two months later, we meet with Eduard Sola and his parents, now over the whirlwind of awards and the hangover from the political debate that arose from the word charnego.

In this Sunday's dossier, we want to focus on a key factor in determining whether a language is healthy: the transmission of Catalan from parents to children. We'll speak with linguists, experts in multilingualism, and also with testimonials from the screenwriter of House on fire, Eduard Sola, and the Cavall Fort artist Màriam Ben-Arab.

Anna Solé Mena has lived in Belgium for 25 years and has worked at the European Commission for almost the same amount of time. In 2010, she published Multilingual from the cradle (UOC), a book in which she offered recommendations for raising children in multiple languages, something she has successfully practiced with her own family. Language, which was an interest parallel to her professional career, has finally converged within it: for the past three years, she has been the multilingualism expert for the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission. At a time of great social diversity and great complexity for Catalan, she advocates for the preservation of mother tongues and also for learning the community languages.

If any sport can make you sweat your guts out in Barcelona, it's trying to find gym classes in Catalan. In the municipal sports centers (CEM), which are public sports facilities, Catalan appears to be the official language (on signs, on the website, and online). However, this directive doesn't translate into the classes. Laia does bodypump at the Joan Miró CEM in the New Left of Eixample and certifies that "many teachers are Catalan speakers and greet students in Catalan, but classes are generally in Spanish, except for swimming with the little ones." If you ask them by phone, the receptionist first responds that the classes are "in Spanish," then corrects them by saying they are "in Catalan," and finally offers to switch to Spanish if anyone doesn't understand.

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.

Catalan tends towards Castilian grammar, especially among young people. A study by Pompeu Fabra University has analysed how bilingual people of different ages speak Catalan and Castilian. Using linguistic structures that are different in the two languages, it has analysed what comes out naturally to speakers. The conclusion is that while adults are unsure of how to use these expressions correctly and alternate between correct and incorrect usage, 75% of young people (7-13 years old) have no doubt that the formula they would use is Castilian, even among those who have Catalan as their mother tongue.

Forty years now, Andreu Domingo (Saus, Alt Empordà, 1958), a sociologist and professor at the UAB, has been analysing Catalan demography from the Centre for Demographic Studies, of which he is deputy director. At a time when migration is the focus of political debate around the world, we asked him about the keys to the transformation of Catalan society, the impact of the decline in Catalan and reactionary phenomena such as that of the Aliança Catalana in Ripoll.