The TSJC strikes Catalan in school again but pecks the crest of Bilingual School

BarcelonaNew blow from justice to Catalan in schools. This Monday, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has ordered the provisional execution of the ruling it issued last September, in which it annulled a dozen articles of the decree to protect Catalan in schools. A norm that Pere Aragonès's government approved in 2024 and that only a month later the courts suspended it, which is why it had never been applied. In fact, sources from the Department of Education have assured that Monday's ruling will not mean any change in the day-to-day of Catalan classrooms.

The TSJC has upheld the request submitted by the Assembly for a Bilingual School of Catalonia (AEB), which requested that the ruling on the decree be executed, despite the fact that various parties, such as Plataforma per la Llengua or the Generalitat itself, announced that they would file an appeal. However, in its ruling, the magistrates also reprimand the AEB for a series of requests that the court has dismissed. Monday's decision is not yet final and represents the umpteenth chapter in the judicial journey of Catalan in schools, as it is still pending the Constitutional Court's final word on whether a 25% of teaching in Spanish must be guaranteed.

The TSJC states that various requests made by the AEB are "completely foreign" to the debate of the ruling and that it is not its function to order the Generalitat to draft general instructions. The court ends up warning the Bilingual School that what it cannot claim, "in light of a not-yet-final, partially favorable ruling, is to design a system for controlling the Generalitat through the courts, so that the courts impose obligations on the Generalitat beyond the jurisdictional procedure, and on aspects that have not been debated or questioned".

In various responses to requests from the AEB, the magistrates insist on saying that they are being asked to do a task that does not correspond to them, and assure that the administration already complies with the execution of the sentence dictated by the TSJC. "We reiterate that the sentence is merely declarative and that the administration complies with the execution through the non-application of the provisions provisionally annulled by the sentence, without this court being able to demand the preparation of a report on the elaboration of instructions required by the enforcing party and which are not part of the present procedure".

The decision does not affect schools

Beyond the warnings to Escuela Bilingüe, with Monday's resolution the TSJC orders the total or partial annulment of eleven articles that established Catalan and Aranese as normally vehicular and learning languages and as habitual languages in teaching and administrative activity, relations with families, teaching materials, and evaluations. However, from Education they insist that "the provisional execution of the sentence does not alter the ordinary activity of educational centers", and they assure that the norms of organization and management of the centers continue "fully in force, including the criteria for linguistic use". In fact, Education repeats again that the decree in question "was already provisionally suspended and had not been applied to the 2025-2026 academic year".

Despite not having a direct impact on classrooms, the Department of Education had already filed a cassation appeal before the Supreme Court against the TSJC's ruling. In this regard, sources from the ministry insist that the current regulatory framework "provides full legal certainty" to the centers and linguistic projects. In this way, they assure that Catalan – and Aranese in Aran – remains the vehicular language and, at the same time, the system "ensures an adequate presence of Spanish as a curricular language".

Pending the TC

The decree, some of whose articles have been annulled by the TSJC, is based on the dual regulation –a decree and a law– that Pere Aragonès's government approved in 2022 to prevent the application of the ruling on 25% Castilian in classrooms. Two norms that are pending before the Constitutional Court (TC), as the TSJC referred the dual regulation to it so that it could decide whether the decree and the law infringe the Constitution. Despite warnings in the middle of last year that the ruling on linguistic percentages in classrooms could be known soon and that it would be a setback for Catalan, for the moment the Constitutional Court continues to make no move.

Apply the articles that have not been annulled

This very Monday, the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, spoke out regarding the TSJC's move, assuring that the Government "will defend Catalan and Catalan schools until the end". In this regard, Illa has defended that they will make available "all the necessary political and legal resources for its defense". The Minister of Linguistic Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila, also spoke out, who, in a message on X, insisted that the legal services of the Generalitat "are studying the ruling to respond to it".

From Plataforma per la Llengua –which also filed an appeal against the TSJC ruling– they also insist that this Monday's resolution "should not raise any new alarms," as it will have no practical consequences in classrooms. They assure that the move "responds" to the Bilingual School strategy of "setting the agenda and conditioning the narrative, and not to a real change." Instead, they recall that, since the September ruling, the rest of the decree remains in force and urge the Government to implement it.

Among the articles that the TSJC did not annul is the one that maintains the requirement of C2 for new teachers or the one that includes the possibility of sanctioning teachers who fail to comply with the linguistic project. "The Department of Linguistic Policy has real room for action in the execution of this resolution. There is a need for willingness to exercise it," they insist.

The majority union in the education sector has also reacted to the resolution: USTEC has called for the Government to make an immediate declaration to "shield Catalan" in classrooms and has demanded an urgent meeting with the department to "work on measures that guarantee the protection and legal security of teachers in the face of this situation".