The People's Party (PP) and Vox continue their war against the Catalan language in the Balearic Islands. The conservative PP, who govern the Palma city council with the support of far-right Vox, have agreed that, before the month of July, the requisites for Catalan language skills to work at the council will be eliminated, with the agreement including the companies and municipal bodies in which the current government considers the language requirement to be unnecessary. The proposal was presented by Vox, but it had the support of the PP. Thus, from now on, Catalan skills will be treated as a merit in job applications, but not a requirement. The two parties detailed that it will be necessary to study each case, that is to say, each specific workplace. Although the measure has been agreed to by both parties, they have used different discourses to defend it. For her part, Mercedes Celeste, from Vox, has spoken of "regulating or adapting" the language, while Vox's spokesperson at the city council, Fulgencio Coll, has argued that it is a "humanitarian issue", since, according to him, it was unacceptable to allow "apartheid" against the Spanish language.
The agreement between the PP and Vox also includes the changing of the domain of the city council's website - from the current 'palma.cat', it will be changed to 'palma.es' - and the social media channels of the municipal government of Palma will also now switch to using Spanish. This change must come into effect in April, but the '.cat' domain already redirects users to the '.es' site.
Catalan as a requirement
Vox envisages that the merit given to job applications for knowledge of Catalan should not exceed that of the qualifications necessary to work in each job. In particular, the extreme rightists want Catalan to stop being a requirement in jobs when the employee does not provide direct attention to the public. For example, Coll believes that Palma local police officers should not have to meet the Catalan language requirement. "We are not against Catalan as the left says. We love Mallorcan and we speak it, but we cannot allow an 'apartheid' against the official language of the state, which is Spanish. I got into politics five years ago to prevent Mallorca from following the Catalanist path. In this proposition we defend the use of Spanish and Catalan equally. That any member of the public can be served in both languages", defended Coll in the session this Wednesday. "We ask that the requirement not be an obstacle. Right now we are working to identify thousands of jobs. And there are many that do not need to have a Catalan language requirement. Having a basic level is more than enough. Those who attend in the windows of the Offices of Public Attention need the requirement, on the other hand, a local police officer in Palma does not need it, most of them already speak it fluently", added the Vox spokesperson.
Criticism from the opposition
The opposition was extremely critical of the new measure, since they consider that the whole move generates hatred among the public. The Socialists' spokesperson, Rosario Sánchez, argued that "it is very concerning the joyfulness with which the PP assumes these conditions imposed on it by the far right, which break with the Statute of Autonomy, the Law of Linguistic Normalization and consensuses of the last forty years". In the same vein, PSIB councillor Silvana Martínez stated that the motion is an attack on the Catalan language and cultural heritage. From Unidas Podemos, Lucía Muñoz, thinks it is "absurd". For his part, Més per Palma councillor Miquel Àngel Contreras asked himself: "What do the PP and Vox have against the language of Mallorcans?" And he warned that "the proposal is illegal because it goes against the Statute of Autonomy and violates Article 30 of the Civil Service Law of the Balearic Islands".
PP councillor Mercedes Celeste denied that the proposal aims to eliminate the Catalan requirement for certain positions. "It is to regulate and adjust. We are evaluating all jobs to adjust the Catalan requirement in each case. In some very specific ones where there is no contact with the public, we will assess whether it can become a merit", she affirmed. "Anyone who has public contact must master both languages. We will transfer to both the city council and public companies what is on the street, which is cordial bilingualism," she asserted.