The Catalan education ministry has presented a series of statistics this Thursday on the use of Catalan in the broad educational environment that are enough to send a chill down your spine. So much stirring up the issue both here and there, so much judicial persecution to obtain more teaching hours for Castilian, so much hostility toward Catalan language immersion in schools, so much political battle to prevent Catalan from having the weight that it should logically have given that it is the most fragile of the country's languages, so much energy that has been devoted to de-Catalanizing Catalonia, the best way to denationalize the country's identity: it was impossible for all this to end well.
As has been repeatedly said, Catalan is in a situation of linguistic emergency, but the decline it has suffered in the last fifteen years, since 2006, in the field of education, in students' communication with their teachers in classrooms, among students themselves in the playground and in group activities, and in the way that teachers relate to students, has collapsed at such a speed that one can only wonder what political leaders have been doing in recent years. Where were they all looking while all this was happening? What were they thinking? Because if in 2006, 56% of fourth-year secondary students always used Catalan to ask a question in class and now the percentage does not reach 40%, something must have been done wrong, mustn't it? Or if, in group activities, Catalan always used to be the language of communication for 67.8% and now it is only for 28.4%, someone should have noticed that much earlier, right? And the teachers? How can it be explained that 63.7% used to address their classes in Catalan and now only 46.8% do so?
It's all very well to have statistics and pilot plans to map a way out of the language emergency that we can see right in front of us but it seems quite clear that it was the obligation of those who govern to have got to this point much earlier. Especially before we have entered this kind of vicious circle in which the situation is so serious that it seems that nothing or almost nothing will work to dig Catalan out of its hole, with the vital rescue operation it needs at all levels, both public and private. Only through positive discrimination will it be possible to rescue Catalan. And yes, on that there can be absolutely no compromise, and the errors of recent years that have greatly penalized Catalan must be reverted and corrected.
In Catalan public and private audiovisual media it is becoming more frequent to hear Castilian. It is not a question of downplaying a language spoken by 591 million people on the planet, which is an official language in 21 countries and whose possibilities for expansion are almost limitless. No one is so deluded as to think that Castilian will one day have difficulties in Catalonia - leaving aside those who say this out of self-interest or demagogy. The reality is that, in the decline that Catalan is suffering in the Catalan audiovisual media, there is no possibility (unlike for Castilian) of any off-setting situation of growth outside Catalonia.
In summary, Catalan must either establish itself as Catalonia's own language, with the implications which that has for audiovisual media and schools or it will end up being impossible for it to resist the push of Castilian. The Madrid media know this and have imposed a discourse contrary to reality. It is not that Castilian is in decline in the educational community, but rather that Catalan is agonizing. And the Catalan government must make this its permanent ensign of struggle, even if it faces powerful groups, also Catalan, who pursue other goals dressed in sheep's clothing. They need to walk the talk.