The president of the Aragonese Government, Jorge Azcón, assured this Wednesday that in his community “Catalan is not spoken” and defended his Executive's plans to withdraw the official recognition of the region's own languages from Aragonese and Catalan.
From Brussels, where today he met with the vice president of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, the popular stressed that his team will defend the "own linguistic modalities" of the community, which range "from Cheso to Fragatino", but which do not to “normalize” neither Aragonese nor Catalan, “a language that is spoken in a neighboring community” and that, in their opinion, they want to “impose” in Aragon. “If what someone asks of me is to go along with what the independentists want, he is not going to get it,” he asserted.
The PP-Vox Government plans to eliminate the legal recognition that Aragonese and Catalan enjoy in the region to refer instead to the different linguistic varieties spoken mainly in the Pyrenees, the Pre-Pyrenees and eastern Aragon.
To this end, the Executive proposes modifying the article of the cultural heritage law that determines that “Aragonese and Catalan of Aragon, in which their dialect varieties are included, are the languages and linguistic modalities of their own.”
This wording was introduced in 2016, not without controversy, through an amendment by Chunta Aragonesista (CHA), which then governed with the PSOE under the presidency of Javier Lambán, to the budget accompanying law.
From the current Executive, they consider that it is an interested interpretation of the Statute of Autonomy that makes a “blank slate” with the rest of the linguistic modalities of Aragon.
With the change, they intend to recognize that wealth, which means that Cheso, Patués, Chistabín, Ansotano, Maellano or Fragatino, among other modalities of Aragonese or Fabla, will be protected.
The legislative reform will also affect the Aragonese Academy of Language, which includes the Aragonese Institute and the Aragonese Institute of Catalan. According to what Heraldo de Aragón published this Sunday, the objective would be to transform said institution so that it recognizes the different linguistic varieties since, according to the current Government, academics try to homogenize a grammar, so "there is a risk" that in Aragon ends up speaking “Barcelona Catalan” instead of its linguistic varieties.
The announcement to eliminate the consideration of "own languages", which was already included in the PP's electoral program, comes after the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, declared last week that it is "urgent" to protect "two minority languages" - in reference to the Aragonese and the Asturian or bable - and will announce a “joint strategy” to work with the communities in the defense of this heritage.
However, the Government of Aragon does not agree that standardized Aragonese and Catalan should be protected. “The minister does not understand the cultural wealth that exists in Aragon. To say that in Aragon Aragonese is spoken like Batúa in the Basque Country is to ignore the reality of this community,” they declared to the regional newspaper.
