The Council of Europe has urged Spain to take "immediate legislative action" to guarantee the use of co-official languages, including Catalan, in fields such as judicial proceedings. In the report assessing the protection of languages which are termed regional and minority languages in Spain, the experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) condemns the "rare" use of Catalan in judicial proceedings, because judges mainly use Spanish.
"This leads to a much lower use of regional and minority languages in court than would be expected", says the document in which the experts call for amendments to the legal framework, so that "it is made clear" that judicial, civil and administrative authorities can make use of the co-official languages if requested by one of the parties. "No progress has been made in this regard," the experts regret in the report, which assesses the protection of minority languages in Spain and makes recommendations for each of them according to the region in question.
Regarding Catalan in Catalonia, the experts regret that they have not received "enough information" from Spain on its use in the public administration, and thus are not able to make an assessment.
In the case of Catalan - known as Valencian - in the Valencian Country, the experts call for the language to be "spoken in all levels of education". To do so, they recommend a language immersion plan that increases the "use of Valencian in teaching".
About the situation of Catalan in La Franja de Ponent [the Western Strip], which are Catalan-speaking territories in eastern Aragon, bordering Catalonia, the experts call for including the term "Catalan" in the Statute of Autonomy and state there has been an "improvement" in the situation of Catalan in the region. The study points out that the Aragon government has argued that the pandemic "prevented it from implementing measures for the promotion and recognition of the Catalan language".
Recently, the Council of Europe warned the Spanish state about the situation of Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural, who has been imprisoned since October 16th 2017. The Spanish Supreme Court sentenced him to nine years in prison for sedition in October 2019. The general rapporteur for Human Rights defenders of this organisation, Alexandra Louis, believes that Cuixart continues to suffer "reprisals and intimidation", and highlighted that his situation has not improved.