05.02.2014 - 00:36
In order “to guarantee the general interest”, the Catalan Executive rejects changing “a single comma” of the linguistic immersion model in place in Catalonia’s school system for the last 30 years, as it was confirmed by the Government’s Spokesperson and Minister for the Presidency Francesc Homs on Tuesday. Despite the latest judicial rulings forcing the introduction of Spanish as a language of instruction, the Catalan Government “will continue to implement Catalonia’s Education Law (LEC)”, stated Homs.
In addition, he announced that on Friday they will file an appeal against last week’s sentence issued by the Catalan High Court (TSJC) that was interpreting a previous decision from the Spanish Supreme Court. The TSJC ruling forced five schools to teach “at least” 25% of the mandatory school subjects in Spanish in the classrooms where the family of a single student is asking for it, regardless of the opinion of the other pupils’ families. “They want to dismantle through the back door what we have been building over the last 30 years via democratic means and backed by an extraordinary consensus”, complained Homs. He also highlighted that the system had previously been backed by the Constitutional Court and built through many laws that have not been declared unconstitutional.
Furthermore, the Catalan Council for Constitutional Guarantees (CGE)—an independent advisory body on jurisdiction matters—stated on Tuesday that the Spanish Government’s Education Reform is “unconstitutional” since it recentralizes power and goes against the linguistic immersion model. The CGE identified 9 unconstitutional areas and highlighted that the Spanish Executive’s Reform goes against Catalonia’s self-government and own laws such as the LEC. The CGE rejects the idea that the Spanish authorities can assess whether vehicular languages are used “in a proportionate way”, which is to be decided by the Catalan Government. Therefore, Homs announced that the Catalan Government will take such reforms to the Constitutional Court in order to stop its implementation.
The Catalan Government refuses to immediately change the entire school system for the recent judicial sentences and announced it will appeal against them. Therefore, since the matter is far from being closed, the Catalan Executive, in order “to guarantee the general interest”, “will not change a single comma” of the linguistic immersion model despite last week’s TSJC rulings. Homs highlighted that the system guarantees “the knowledge of both Catalan and Spanish” and that in some years, Catalan pupils have gotten results “above the average” of their peers throughout Spain in Spanish language tests.
The TSJC sentence directly affects only 5 families and 5 schools, in a system comprising more than 1 million pupils. It follows a previous sentence issued on Monday last week by the Spanish Supreme Court, which states that families are entitled to have their children being taught in Spanish as the vehicular language in Catalonia.
This contradicts the current school model, recognized in the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, which was approved by the Spanish Parliament and the Catalan people through a binding referendum in 2006. However, it re-interprets a sentence from 2010 from the Constitutional Court that stated that “Catalan has to be the center of gravity” of Catalonia’s school system but it cannot exclude Spanish. Furthermore, it added that the Catalan Government had to decide on the exact model and include Spanish “in a proportionate way”.
Back then, the Constitutional Court, in a totally-politicized process, trimmed the Catalan Statute of Autonomy approved 4 years before and was one of the triggers of the current surge in the self-determination movement. In a previous ruling, the Constitutional Court had validated the linguistic immersion model, since it guarantees that pupils know both Catalan and Spanish by the end of their studies. The Court stressed that the Constitution does not include “the right to be taught in Spanish” but only includes “the right and duty to know Spanish”. Since the Catalan school system totally guarantees this obligation, as proven by academic results, the Court validated it.
In fact, the Catalan school system has been praised by UNESCO and the European Commission as a “best practice example” since it guarantees equal opportunities and true bilingualism, avoiding the creation of two separate language communities. It is based on the linguistic immersion principle, making Catalan the language of instruction for almost all the subjects except Spanish and a few others depending on each school. It includes many flexibility measures as well as means to integrate newcomers, such as individualized attention in Spanish and other languages. The model has been in place since 1983 and it has been always supported by an almost total consensus of Catalan society.
However, in the last decade Spanish nationalism has targeted the immersion model, particularly from Madrid-based media. It has said that Spanish is marginalized in Catalonia and has sponsored several initiatives to weaken the model. Anybody who has been in Catalonia can witness that Spanish is omnipresent and often used in public spaces. Furthermore, most of the TV and radio programmes are broadcast in Spanish, and a large part of the cultural offerings are in this language.
Spanish nationalists used the highly politicized process that culminated in the 2010 sentence from the Constitutional Court re-interpreting a law already in place and approved through a binding referendum as the excuse to go against the Catalan school system.
The Supreme Court—which, in the Spanish legal system cannot change laws and does not decide fundamental rights (which is left up to the Constitutional Court)—ruled that families had the right to have their children schooled in Spanish. In the last few years, it has issued a series of sentences in this sense and rejected the Catalan Government’s appeals. Catalonia’s High Court is following the Spanish Supreme Court’s doctrine and supervising its implementation. For this reason it is also issuing sentences against the current model.
On top of this, the Spanish Government is developing an Education Reform that aims to guarantee that children can be schooled in Spanish in Catalonia. A year ago, the Spanish Education Minister, José Ignacio Wert, stated that his “interest was to Hispanicise Catalan pupils”. In fact, Wert and the Spanish nationalism blame the Catalan school model for the rising support for Catalonia’s independence from Spain and have decided to stop it. However, statistical results show that support for independence has increased among all age groups, including those who studied under Franco’s Fascist Dictatorship and its school system.
