The school in Barcelona that teaches Catalan "as if it were a foreign language"

BarcelonaBetween a Starbucks and a Yoga Studio Barcelona, ​​two blocks from the Raval and in front of thousands and thousands of tourists who walk through the streets surrounding Plaza Catalunya every day. In the middle of 2025 and after knowing that Catalan is already the habitual language of less than a third of the population, it seems almost impossible that in this part of the Catalan capital you can hear the expression "not understanding a draft".

If we take into account that less than half of the teachers regularly use Catalan to address the entire class and that only one in four students identifies it as their first language, it also seems a utopia that "borrajo" could appear in a conversation in a school classroom. But at the San Francisco de Asís school it happens.

Beyond the specific anecdote, this episode is a good example of the success of this state-funded school, which has 30% of vulnerable students, when it comes to achieving what seems increasingly difficult: that Catalan be the vehicular language in the classrooms and that children who arrive in Catalonia without understanding a draft, get by with Catalan after a few courses.

To understand this success, we have to look back 20 years –although the school is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year–, when the centre went from having students "from native families who lived above Gran Vía" to seeing how, suddenly, the wave of migration meant that all the students at the school " ina Fontfreda, a Catalan teacher, former head of studies and one of the main people responsible for linguistic immersion at the centre. "Given that the students did not know Catalan, nor did they know Spanish, and they have a very important culture of effort, they learned Catalan as a third or fourth language and that was it," describes the director of the centre, Maite Fenollosa.

"They didn't see that they needed Catalan"

However, a few years later, other newly arrived families began to arrive who did know Spanish, even though it was not their first language. This upset everything, because "since they understood each other in Spanish, they didn't see that they needed to speak Catalan," Fontfreda recalls. All of this made the school realize that the way they taught Catalan was no longer working well.

"We told the inspector and they helped us a lot and sent us to the Consorci [of Education]," explains the director. From then on, They had a LIC professional (a language and social cohesion advisor) and some hours of welcome class. With this they saw that "Catalan had to be taught as if it were a foreign language", since for the majority, for practical purposes, it was.

Now, two decades later, the method continues, despite having fewer resources. Everywhere in the school and in all subjects, teachers always speak in Catalan. "Even when we teach French, if we need to clarify something, we do it in Catalan," Fontfreda explains, laughing. She adds: "We are a bit of a resistance. Whoever it is, we speak to them in Catalan and, if we need to survive, we resort to English."

Apart from speaking it constantly, the school has introduced various activities to promote Catalan. "We use JClic, a vocabulary platform called GALÍ and Edu365. It is true that we are not in favour of overexposing students on screens, but technology is essential because it allows them to hear the language," explains the teacher. In addition, they give several oral presentations and every day they spend half an hour reading. Some days they go together to the library and each one – including the teacher, to set an example – reads their book, and other days they all focus on the same book and read aloud.

As usual, another key is what happens at home. "Outside of here they don't hear or use Catalan anywhere," Fontfreda laments. That's why, whenever they have a meeting with families, the advice is the same: "Watch TV3 and 3Cat together." The teacher explains that this allows the children to continue listening to Catalan and, in turn, the parents to do so as well, since most of them don't know the language either. "It doesn't matter if it's InfoK, the news or a series, the important thing is that they are in contact with the language," she insists.

"The relationship with the parents is essential and sometimes we put a little pressure on them," the school director admits. This press This means that communication with families is always done in Catalan first and then translated if necessary. Graduation is also done entirely in Catalan and parents who do not understand Catalan are encouraged to speak Catalan. "You can't have lived here for 15 years and not understand it," Fenollosa tells them.

Success, but no reception classroom

Just by spending some time in the classroom you can see how the method works. In 4th grade they are working on verb conjugations and when the teacher asks for examples, students' hands keep going up and insist on participating. After going through the first and second, almost everyone gets it right, but with the third – the verbs that end in -go– things get complicated. "Write", says a boy with his finger raised. "If it were in Spanish, I would buy it from you, but not in Catalan. Come back, come on," replies Fontfreda sitting at the end of the table. Meanwhile, in the classroom there is silence and attention unusual for a group of twenty 10-year-old students.

Despite the school's good performance, management and teachers complain that they lack hands and that, Although all the students are from newly arrived families, they do not have a reception classroom.. "We don't have one because it is a resource that is based on what is written on the ID, and many of them, despite not understanding Catalan or Castilian, are not taken into account because they are listed as Spanish," they complain.

All of this means that they lack hands. "It is true that before I left school exhausted every day, but I left happy and satisfied," Fontfreda admits. But she warns: "Now I leave school just as exhausted, but when I take the metro home I do so anxious thinking that I have not been able to dedicate all the time that each student needs and that I would like."