Education again suspends the requirement of C2 Catalan for new teachers
The department justifies that there is not enough staff with language accreditation to cover vacancies and absences
BarcelonaThe requirement of C2 level Catalan for new teachers will not be effective next academic year. Education has once again suspended the obligation to have this certificate due to a lack of qualified individuals who can "guarantee the right to education", as confirmed by the department to ARA. While it was announced in December that all teachers wishing to enter the teaching pool for the 2026-2027 academic year would have to prove their C2 Catalan, this Thursday a resolution published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat goes back and modifies the linguistic conditions for interim staff.
Specifically, it will no longer be necessary to have the C2 title approved because Education has calculated that there would not be enough qualified personnel to have sufficient staff, "especially in certain specialities and territories," they state. Priority will be given to those who have the C2 over those who have not obtained it, because accrediting it becomes a requirement, albeit subject to a moratorium — and, therefore, it ceases to be a merit worth 5 points. In practical terms, then, to enter the pool it will only be necessary to commit to obtaining the C2 during the 2026-2027 academic year. According to the resolution, these are "transitional measures of an exceptional nature." The ministry insisted this Friday that it will only happen in cases where there are not enough teachers with the C2.
A requirement in force
The C2 requirement came into force just last September. At the time when the TSJC annulled a large part of the articles of the 2024 linguistic regime decree, the suspension of the remaining articles was lifted, one of which was the mandatory C2 Catalan for teachers and substitute teachers who wish to access the teaching pool. In December 2025, the minister Esther Niubó committed to "applying the decree" but also added that the impact of the measure would be studied by the Directorate General of Teaching Staff. In this Thursday's resolution, the verdict is that "the immediate implementation of the C2 level Catalan language requirement would entail a serious difficulty in covering replacements and vacancies" because there is "a structural insufficiency of teaching staff with this accreditation, which prevents the immediate and widespread application of the aforementioned requirement".
According to the decree, teachers who are within the system will have to prove C2 when the department determines it from the 2027-2028 academic year. However, Education has never specified a date. In 2024 it was made public that only 25% of teachers had C2.
A never-implemented obligation
The C2 Catalan requirement for teaching staff is a historical debt. It already appears in the 2009 Education Law, but it had never been effectively applied. Teachers who are currently active have only had to prove level C1, which is what is validated by completing up to the 4th year of ESO. Upon noticing the brutal decline of Catalan in educational centers, the ERC government activated this requirement in 2022 for 2024, but it has since been postponed. First, to prioritize staff stabilization, and then because it was one of the articles included in the 2024 linguistic regime decree which had been preliminarily frozen by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia in the same year.
Therefore, the Government is now once again putting the C2 Catalan requirement on hold to "guarantee the service next academic year" and give new teachers time to take the exam. In fact, following this requirement announced so many times, there has been an accelerated increase in people taking the C2 Catalan exam: it has gone from fewer than a thousand annual C2 accreditations in the decade before 2022 to 13,500 this academic year. Despite this, the department has calculated that it would not be enough and has prioritized the right to education over linguistic competence.