The president of the Mallorcan Circle of Businesses, Bartomeu Rosselló, denounced on his Facebook profile an instance of anti-Catalan discrimination that he suffered Friday in the airport of Son Sant Joan in Palma at the hands of an employee of the public airport operator, Aena, whilst waiting to fly to Barcelona.
Rosselló, who described the incident as "surreal", gave the following description of the event:
"Two hours delay in the Son Sant Joan airport to fly to BCN. When I went to Aena's information desk, I had a surreal but unfortunately all too common experience.
The customer service representative, after attending to all the foreigners in English, turned to me (the native). I, with a smile, asked her:
- [in Catalan] Good afternoon, could you tell me how long the delay for the flight to Barcelona will be?
- [in Spanish] Speak to me in Spanish which is a beautiful language and the most spoken in the world, so we can all understand each other.
- Oh, what a surprise! After dealing with all these foreigners, you, who are carrying out a public service, avoid the single fact of wanting to understand Catalan, the official language of these islands. I have not lacked respect towards you but nor will I allow you to treat us like second-class citizens in our own country.
- I'll call security.
- I hope so, since you are the only one that is breaking the law. Goodbye."
"I will not post a photo of the information desk to preserve the person's privacy, although she would deserve it."
Catalan is an official language of the Balearic islands, as established by its Statute of Autonomy, along with Spanish. As such, you can't stop anyone from speaking Catalan on the islands.
Rosselló also posted a photograph of the gate for the flight to Barcelona.
