A strategy to defend the Catalan language is needed. The government of Catalonia must find it with the utmost urgency and begin to give an adequate and forceful response to the intolerable accusations that are being made everyday against Catalan, the language immersion policy and the educational community. Those who were expecting more pleasant times, more of management than of politics, have been left stranded by the frontism that has been triggered by the ruling of the High Court of Catalonia implanting 25% of Castilian. Please, leaders of the Republican Left (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (Junts), rise to the task and address the issue of the survival of the Catalan language without throwing plates at each other and stop offering easy and simplistic answers as if it were the expansion of the airport, no matter how important that, or any of the thousands of disputes remaining open, might be.
Because even if the Catalan government has not realized it, or prefers not to realize it, the rampant Spanish nationalism installed in all the halls of power knows very well what to do. And it will not take a step back after all the work done to align the courts, the media, the political parties and the opinion makers behind the banner against Catalan. Since the campaign against the language opened, in this new chapter in which the most mild statement uttered is that there is "linguistic apartheid in Catalonia", Catalanism has lagged behind in strategy, discourse and response. You can see it in the things that were said on Monday alone. Pablo Casado announced that he would visit Barcelona on Tuesday to meet with associations that define themselves as defenders of bilingualism; Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the PP's "leading woman", has offered to immediately accept Catalan children who wish to go to school in Madrid; the Spanish ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, of the PSOE, has called for the ruling to be complied with and for "the intimidation of children" to end, and that the body he leads will soon respond to the complaints it has received. I could go on, but isn't that enough?
All this, accompanied by the corresponding media circus, both Spanish and Catalan, with the Catalan public broadcasting corporation, the CCMA, effectively dismantled and the senior positions in TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio more dependent on the date that their terms end, and which, as well, has less importance than it once did. Not to mention the large private Catalan media groups with paper editions, La Vanguardia and El Periódico, where paradoxically they put out editions in Catalan but the thing they defend least is the language. Does anyone imagine that El País, El Mundo or the ABC would not defend Castilian? Well, that's what happens here with Catalan.
I insist: the government needs to take the lead in this matter. Catalan society is awaiting this expectantly. Not by calling demonstrations, which the parties, organizations and the educational community will already do, but by putting themselves institutionally at the forefront of safeguarding Catalan. The language immersion policy as an educational formula is a success story in Catalonia, it has not failed, and this should not be confused with the fact that Catalan is spoken less and less in the streets. It is necessary to support the foundations of the Catalan school, which others want to demolish at all costs. And to do so with a dignity that is reasonable in the face of a challenge like this but also with the inescapable responsibility that it holds, which cannot be delegated or transferred to others.