Education again suspends the C2 Catalan requirement for new teachers

BarcelonaThe requirement of C2 level Catalan for new teachers will not come into effect 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 ministry to ARA. While it was announced in December that teachers wishing to enter the pool for the 2026-2027 academic year would have to prove their C2 level in Catalan, this Thursday a resolution published in the "Official Gazette of the Generalitat" reverses course and modifies the linguistic conditions for being interim staff.

Specifically, it will no longer be necessary to have passed the C2 level because Education has calculated that there would not be enough qualified individuals to ensure sufficient staff, "especially in certain specialties and territories," they state. According to the resolution, these are "transitional measures of an exceptional nature," although it is not officially specified for how long. Having the higher level of Catalan will indeed give priority to those who have C2 over those who have not obtained it, as it is a requirement, albeit subject to a moratorium - and therefore, it ceases to be a merit worth 5 points. To enter the pool, only the commitment to obtain C2 during the 2026-2027 academic year will be required.

The C2 requirement came into effect just last September. At the time when the TSJC annulled a large part of the articlesof the 2024 linguistic regime decree, the suspension of the remaining articles was lifted, one of which was the mandatory C2 Catalan for interim teachers and professors wishing to access the teaching pool. In December 2025, minister Esther Niubó committed to "apply 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 great difficulty in covering substitutions and vacancies" because there is "a structural insufficiency of teaching staff possessing this accreditation, which prevents the immediate and widespread application of the aforementioned requirement."

According to the decree, teachers within the system will have to prove C2 when the department determines it, starting from the 2027-2028 academic year. However, Education has never specified a date, although it is public knowledge that in 2024 only 25% of teachers had C2.

A historical requirement never implemented

The C2 Catalan requirement for teachers 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 validated by completing up to 4th year of ESO. Upon noticing the brutal regression 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 temporarily 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, as a result of this requirement, announced so many times, there has been an accelerated increase in the number of people taking the C2 Catalan exam: it has gone from less than a thousand annual C2 accreditations in the decade before 2022 to 13,500 this academic year. Despite this, the ministry has calculated that it would not be enough and has prioritized the right to education over linguistic competence.