A definitive deal has been reached over the Balearic Islands government. The two parties of the Spanish right - the People's Party and the extremists Vox - have this Wednesday announced that the far-right party will abstain over the investiture as autonomous community president of the PP's Margalida Prohens so that she can govern alone and create a single-colour Balearic government. Thus, the two groups of the right have signed a programmatic agreement, tied to a committee that will monitor compliance with the pact. The agreement is based on the following key lines: persecution of the Catalan language, "promotion of Spanish identity and culture", tax reductions, a rethink of the public health system to end "inefficiencies", and addressing "interfamily violence".
It is, all in all, a programme whose purpose, according to the two signatory parties, is to "preserve freedom, economic development, improvements in social services and public health, the protection of women and the public safety of citizens of the Balearic Islands, with special attention to the problem of illegal immigration and the persecution of the mafias that promote it and benefit from human trafficking". If the PP complies with all the agreements reached with the far-right party, Vox undertakes to give "stability" to the Prohens executive.
Measures aimed at "freedom"
The pact includes a four-point list of measures to promote "freedom". And they contain the "defence of the unity of Spain", as well as the Spanish Constitution. "We will stand up for the history of Spain and the Balearic Islands and guarantee remembrance, understood as an integrational element for reconciliation, fighting any attempt by those who try to use it to divide Spaniards," adds one of these points. Similarly, they promise to "end policies that promote confrontation and division" as well as those that attack "the unity of the nation".
Persecution of the Catalan language
The pact includes elements that attack the status of the Catalan language: knowledge of Catalan will no longer be a requirement to enter the civil service and the Office for the Defence of Linguistic Rights will be eliminated, to be replaced by the new Office for the Guarantee of Linguistic Freedom "to put an end to the devastating socialist and separatist policies". That is to say, an organization dedicated to protecting Catalan will be eliminated to create another aimed at annihilating the territory's own language and installing the linguistic supremacy of Spanish.
Thus, it is "promised to put an end to 'ideological indoctrination' in the school classrooms of the Balearic Islands", as well as "to modify the rules that imply a linguistic imposition, assuming that there are two official languages in the community". Despite this, it is only knowledge of Catalan that is being dropped as a requirement for access to the civil service; Spanish will still be obligatory. The new government also undertakes to give freedom to parents so that they can choose their children's school.