This weekend, 218 members of the Barcelona Bar Association (ICAB) reacted against the controversial statement of the Association’s constitutional law section, supporting the ruling that requires 25% of classes to be taught in Spanish in Catalonia. Since Sunday 26th, the support has doubled, over 500 members oppose it now. Specifically, 510 lawyers and 11 associations have signed this declaration against the extremists' statement and have submitted it to the Board of the Association.
In the declaration, the lawyers express their "profound rejection of a strictly political statement, aligned with the Spanish ultranationalist theses that have greatly helped to make meaningless the words "Constitution" and "constitutionalist", which they claim to “defend”. As jurists, they also wanted to express their "surprise" not so much for "the use of ICAB statements to convey political opinions —since it is not the first time— but for the lack of legal content of it and, above all, the breach of the basic principle of respect for the presumption of innocence".
Petitions to the Board
In addition, the signatories denounce that "any statement made by a section of the Bar to the press is understood to be the opinion of the Association itself, and the fact that the ICAB Board has not yet issued any statement rejecting it, also contributes to this". Thus, the statement of the constitutional law section appears to be "a political statement upheld by the ICAB". Therefore, they have asked the Board to express its "immediate rejection of the tone and content" of the controversial text against linguistic immersion.
Accusations against the Catalan Government
Last Friday, on Christmas Eve, the aforementioned constitutional law section published a harsh statement against the Catalan Government's response to the imposition of a minimum of 25% tuition hours to be taught in Spanish. According to these Association members, no protection was given by the Catalan Government to the family of a 5-year-old child at a Canet de Mar school, who demanded that in the child's class Spanish should be used 25% of the time. In its statement, the section, chaired by lawyer Francisco Chamorro Bernal, accuses the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, and the Catalan minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, of "publicly refusing to comply with the ruling" in another curricular subject as well as the language one, and of "supporting the school's management team".
The section also criticised the Catalan government for "not mentioning what has happened to the five-year-old child from Canet. On social media, some proposed to isolate the child from the rest of the class and stone the family house". The section argues that "this Constitutional law section believes that the attitude adopted by the Catalan government authorities is extremely serious and a frontal attack against the principle of the rule of law". It even accused the Catalan Government of not protecting minors in the Canet school, saying that "in an advanced democracy such as ours, comprehensive protection of minors against all forms of violence and secondary victimisation must be guaranteed".
Collection of signatures
In recent days, these lawyers have campaigned against the Catalan government throughout Spain. They have done so by collecting signatures through the Change.org platform, and so far they have registered over 1,700.
"Faced with the harassment campaign in the ICAB promoted by radical pro-independence sectors, among which there is a minority group of lawyers; the majority of lawyers in Barcelona, Catalonia and the rest of Spain want to show our support and solidarity with the ICAB, its constitutional law section and colleagues who have been publicly targeted by these radicals," declare the Spaniards on the platform.