The Catalan High Court of Justice (TSJC) insists that the linguistic model established in the new regulations of the Catalan ministry of Education —the decree law 6/22 and the law 8/22— "is unconstitutional because it opposes the linguistic conjunction model", enforced in the Spanish State, and for that reason appeals to the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) were submitted last summer by the TSJC and the PP and Ciudadanos (Cs) parliamentary groups. This is reflected in one of the three TSJC rulings, made public this Tuesday by the court's press office. The court's decision, announced in advance last week, rules in favour of three families and forces Catalan schools to apply more Castilian in their classes: "In addition to the subject corresponding to the learning of Castilian language, another area, subject or non-linguistic curricular subject that is considered as core or analogous". That is, the 25% Spanish quota which the TSJC enforced on the entire Catalan education system in 2020, which was overruled by the Catalan Parliament in 2022 with a new regulation.
The TSJC argues it can sanction these changes because they are on an individual basis. Anna Simó, Catalan minister of Education, clarified that the ruling will only be applied in two cases, because the third student has already finished compulsory education. The TSJC must rule on two more cases. Around thirty schools must apply the 25% Spanish quota following court rulings.
The court's reasoning
Specifically, the 5th section of the TSJC's contentious-administrative chamber states: "New rules could break the qualitative parity between one language and the other official language, in the sense that only Catalan was recognized as the normal main language in education, while Castilian was limited to a curricular or educational use, the intensity of which is guaranteed only in what is necessary to ensure their knowledge at the end of compulsory education".
In the three rulings, the TSJC agrees "to recognize, as an individualized legal situation, the right of the plaintiff to have her son receive, in his school and course, an effective and balanced education in Spanish, which includes, besides the subject corresponding to the learning of said language, at least another area, subject or non-linguistic curricular subject which, due to its importance in the curriculum as a whole and its teaching workload, can be considered as the main one". Arguments questioning the educational model of the centres were rejected by the court in all three cases, because an appeal of unconstitutionality of the two Catalan rules, approved by the majority of the Catalan Parliament, supported by Junts, ERC, the CUP, the PSC, and the commons, has already been filed by the TSJC.
A binary option
In the three rulings, the TSJC also states: "It must be pointed out that a system of immersion, such as the one used in the centre here examined, could be viable in a free of charge binary or linguistic option education, but it presents some limits in a single integral model of free education for all students, as is the case for the Catalan educational system, in which the co-officiality of languages and the right of students to receive a minimum of education in Spanish, with the constitutional and legal foundation expressed above, must be respected". This statement is interpreted as contradictory to the current linguistic immersion. However, Spain's Constitutional Court (TC) has already established that Spanish must be the main language, despite the TSJC insistence that "Catalan has preferential treatment".