A Spanish court has found partially in favour of an appeal filed by the Spanish education ministry and has established that the Castilian language (Spanish) must be used for a minimum of 25% of teaching hours in Catalan schools, noting that the current vehicular use of the language is "residual".
The decision by the administrative disputes chamber of the Catalan High Court (TSJC) compels the Catalan government to take the necessary measures to ensure that all students "effectively and immediately" receive teaching using each of the two official languages (Castilian and Catalan) as vehicular languages in the classroom, in percentages "which may not be less than 25% in either case".
The ruling constitutes a new move in Catalonia's ongoing language debate. Catalonia has a public education system based on Catalan-language immersion, and a current situation in which surveys suggests everyday usage of the Catalan language is declining. Meanwhile, the Spanish government's new education law, passed by Congress but not yet introduced, provoked controversy outside Catalonia because it does not speak of vehicular languages - precisely the area which today's court decision enters into.
In this Thursday's ruling, the court notes that to reach the percentage of at least 25% of classroom time, Castilian will not only have to be used as the teaching language for the subject of Castilian language itself - which, naturally, is the case at present - but as well, a second subject will need to be taught in Castilian in Catalan schools, and the ruling says this should be a "non-linguistic core subject".
The TSJC states that it has analyzed "the legal framework of which the vehicular use of languages in education forms part" - that is, "the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, the Catalonia Law of Education, the Spanish Law of Education (LOE) and various rulings by the Constitutional Court". Similarly, the court adds that it has also requested information from the Catalan education ministry "on the actual data for the use of both languages in schools".
"Residual use"
The resolution affirms that, according to the documentation provided and the evidence present in the appeal, the overall vehicular use of the Castilian language in the education system of Catalonia is residual, or at least it is so in a significant proportion of teaching centres and groups, and thus there is an infringement of the current legal framework”.
Another core subject in Spanish
The court finds that it is appropriate to set a minimum vehicular use of both official languages that "enable the current situation contrary to the law to be rectified", and it sets the minimum at 25%, which means adding a second core subject taught in Castilian, as well as the subject of Castilian language itself.
The ministry also demanded that the school pre-enrolment forms be modified so that parents could see that Castilian would be as teaching language at all levels. However, the chamber rejected this request because it considers that with the minimum percentage of 25%, the use of both languages would already be complied with. In addition, it points out that the principle of non-discrimination of students on the grounds of language, as established in the Statute of Autonomy, imposes a universal bilingual system that "by its very nature excludes the freedom of choice by users". Therefore, the fact that the enrolment forms do not include the vehicular language option could not be considered illegal.
Catalan's "linguistic emergency"
This resolution from Spanish judges comes four days after the pro-Catalan language group Plataforma per la Llengua launched a campaign on social media and the press to warn of the "linguistic emergency" that now affects the Catalan language and to "set off alarms for everyone" about the decrease in use of the language.
In an interview with the ACN news agency, the president of the Plataforma, Òscar Escuder, stated that the public and the authorities must be alertedregarding this degrowth. According to the language pressure group, the Catalan language is now in the paradoxical situation of having large percentages of people that know how to speak and write it in Catalonia, and over 90% able to understand it, but at the same time, the date shows its usage is declining everywhere, "with figures that are frightening."
Currently, the public education system in Catalonia is based on a principle of language immersion, with the Catalan language being used as the teaching language for, at least in theory, the vast majority of classes at both primary and secondary level, in order to ensure that all students learn not only the more socially-prevalent Castilian language, but also the Catalan language, which about 35% of the Catalan population said they used most often in a 2018 survey.