The use of Catalan in the municipal plenary sessions of various municipalities in Northern Catalonia has come to trial this Tuesday in the Administrative Court of Montpellier, where the suspended president of Parliament, Laura Borràs, and the president have agreed to support the affected mayors of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, and they have starred in a cold and uncomfortable greeting.
The meeting, in which the former Minister of Culture Lluis Puig has also been present, takes place after the Republican has branded the case for which Borràs has been convicted of prevarication and forgery of documents as corruption and she has accused ERC, specifically the first vice president of the Catalan Chamber, Alba Vergés, for having violated her rights, something she did again this Tuesday from Montpellier.
The public rapporteur of the court that has tried the municipalities of Elna, Els Banys, Portvendres, Tarerac and Sant Andreu de la Sureda, in Northern Catalonia, is committed to annulling the change in the regulations that allowed Catalan to be spoken in the plenary sessions of these municipalities. The magistrate recalled that "the language of the Republic" is French and she believes that the fact of translating the debates leaves French in a worse position. For his part, the lawyer for three of the municipalities affected, Mateu Pons, believes that this argument is absurd and that the fact that the interventions are first made in Catalan does not affect French because, in fact, the minutes are made entirely in this language.
The prefect of the Pyrénées-Orientales, Rodrigue Furcy, took the matter to court after trying -by letter- to get the municipalities involved to reverse the modification of the regulations of the municipal councils to allow debate in Catalan, guaranteeing the translation into French of the interventions. Some did but others, such as Elna, Els Banys, Portvendres, Tarerac and Sant Andreu de la Sureda decided to stand firm.
In the trial, the public speaker, the independent magistrate who intervenes in the hearing to analyze the trial and propose a solution, has positioned herself in favor of the leadership's position. During his speech, he remarked that "the language of the Republic" is French and that "the system adopted by the five commons", despite allowing French, puts "up for debate" the fact of "re-electing" it to a language "translated ". "He considers that it is necessary to annul the deliberations of the municipal councils due to the fact of leaving the French language wrong, in the sense of the order of presentation, first in Catalan and then translated. He considers that it is unconstitutional", explained the lawyer Mateu Pons.
In his speech, the lawyer has refuted this argument, ensuring that, in the end, what counts is the "legal value" because the minutes are made entirely in French. Pons has also affirmed that he has the "impression" that the will of the prefect is "to eradicate the Catalan language from all plenary sessions". "Otherwise it cannot be understood," he said. And to make a simile, he has said that "it is as if you have two children and you prefer the first because he is the first." "The Bible also says that the first will be last and that the last will be first. This question of order and prioritization does not make any sense at a legal level," Pons stated.
For his part, the representative of the headquarters has remarked that the Constitution establishes that French is the official language and that this should be the priority. In this sense, he has said that the translation of the interventions is not enough.
The sentence will be made public on May 9, but the mayor of Elna, Nicolàs Garcia, has already advanced that if the court listens to the public speaker and does not agree with them, they will take him before European justice. "We have opened a door, we have already won," he said at the end of the trial. However, as a first step, they are already considering filing an appeal if the sentence is not in their favour. Garcia has shown hope, however, that despite the position of the public speaker, the sentence establishes "jurisprudence" and admits that "languages have added value."
On the other hand, Pons has pointed to the possibility that if the point of contention is really "order", the sentence could open the door to modifying the regulations again so that interventions are made first in French and then in Catalan. However, García believes that this is not the solution because "the pedagogical dimension is lost." ·"If I had been able to intervene in this trial, I would have told him a sentence in Catalan and then in French and he will be attentive because he does not understand him. On the other hand, if I tell him directly in French it will not be like that", insisted the mayor of Elna .
