Once again, the Ciudadanos (Cs) political party has failed in their attempt to attack the Catalan language, and once again the parliamentary majority has expressed its support for the language immersion policy and the Catalan educational model. Almost a week after the High Court of Catalonia issued an ultimatum to the government to comply with a 25% quota of teaching in Castilian (Spanish) in the country's classrooms, the house has voted against a Cs motion urging the Pere Aragonès executive to abide by the court's ruling. The motion had several points and most of them only received votes from the three parties of the Spanish right, although the Catalan Socialists (PSC) also supported some elements, such as compliance with the court ruling itself, which was supported by the four Spanish-wide parties: the PSC, Vox, Cs and the PP.
The Ciudadanos motion, entitled "Harassment suffered by children and families who claim their right to be taught at least 25% of school hours in Castilian," also focused on the linguistic ONG, Plataforma per la Llengua, whom they sought to condemn for "repeated interference in the freedom of Catalan students when choosing the language they speak". This part of the motion was also widely rejected, with only 20 votes in favour (from the PP, Vox and Cs), the abstention of the PSC, and votes against from the other parties.
In the motion, Cs also wanted to get the Parliament to condemn the "stubborn inclination of the Catalan government to disregard the court rulings that protect the right of all Catalan students to receive at least 25% of classroom hours in Spanish", but again failed, with only votes in support coming from the triple Spanish right, and the rest of the groups opposed. Finally, the Catalan Parliament also overturned part of the text urging it to reject "the use of public funds by the government" to spread the "apocalyptic discourse on the situation of Catalan". This issue was included by Ciudadanos in response to the government's launch of an advertising campaign in support of the Catalan educational system, with regard to which Cs announced that they would take the spending to the Court of Accounts.
In his speech to present the text of the motion, Ciudadanos MP Nacho Martín Blanco stated that the public have the right to educate their children in their mother tongue, both in Catalan and Castilian, and claimed that the sentence must be complied with. A few days ago, the party's leader, Carlos Carrizosa, went to the European Parliament to demand action from the EU chamber to impose Castilian in the classrooms. In any case, Martín Blanco reiterated that they consider both languages to be official and that they must therefore be respected.
Five minutes of glory
In the other groups' right of reply, Mònica Palacín of the Republican Left (ERC) considered that this Cs proposal is "another motion aimed at five minutes of glory", and pointed out that in Catalan schools there has been no conflict until they arrived and raised their flag. From Together for Catalonia (Junts), the deputy Glòria Freixa asserted that what they will do is defend education in Catalan, as well as the teachers, and work for Catalan to be an official language in Europe, advising Cs that "if neither 18th century king Felipe V nor the dictator Franco could finish off the Catalan language, they won't either".
From the PSC, the deputy Esther Niubó explained that they had tried to present amendments to the Cs motion but these were not accepted, and thus she accused the party of not having a will to solve problems, but rather, to be more comfortable in confrontation and division. And Carles Riera, of the pro-independence CUP, was strongly critical of the "educational 155" - a reference to the Spanish constitutional article 155 allowing the withdrawl of home rule - which he noted comes at a time when there is a clear decline in the social use of Catalan, and for that reason called for an improvement of the linguistic immersion system. For his part, Joan Carles Gallego, of the left-wing Comuns, said that the motion is "an insult to the intelligence", especially in the context of a pandemic, when schools have other problems, and reiterated that the battle of the language is not the children's problem and to argue on that basis is to insult families and professionals.
Finally, from Vox, Antonio Gallego, as usual, warned that they will take the "separatist leaders" to court for preventing compliance with court rulings, and he stated that they will stand up to the "disgusting public sanctions" led by bodies like Plataforma per la Llengua, who want to satisfy "the fanatical lazis" - an abusive term for independence supporters derived from the word "Nazi". From the PP, Alejandro Fernández limited himself to applauding the motion, which he has described as "impeccable".
New regulatory framework
The language debate already had protagonism in the house yesterday during the question session, when Cs addressed the Catalan education minister, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, on the same issue. In his speech, the minister defended a new regulatory framework to "strengthen" the Catalan school model, and was critical of courts that seek to destroy the consensus in Catalan society. He also lashed out at Cs: "Leave the schools alone, in Catalonia we have no language conflict, you invented it; you only know how to live off confrontation and lies."