Brussels will send a mission to Catalonia to assess the situation of Spanish in the classroom

The European Parliament announced this Tuesday that it will send a mission to Catalonia to assess the situation of Spanish in the classroom.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
25 October 2022 Tuesday 11:34
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Brussels will send a mission to Catalonia to assess the situation of Spanish in the classroom

The European Parliament announced this Tuesday that it will send a mission to Catalonia to assess the situation of Spanish in the classroom. The Petitions Commission of the European Parliament, chaired by the Catalan Dolors Montserrat, from the PP, has approved the petition after the coordinators of the different political groups of the European Parliament have agreed to promote the visit to Catalonia, which still has no date.

These same coordinators will be in charge of detailing the scope of the mission, as well as the agenda and the members of the delegation. In any case, the visit will be made in the second half of 2023, since during the first half of the year it is not possible to carry it out due to the holding of municipal and regional elections.

Coinciding with Hispanic Heritage Day, Citizens MEP Maite Pagazaurtundua organized on October 12 in Brussels the conference “Against discrimination for reasons of language in Spain and in Europe. The exclusion of Spanish as the language of instruction in Spain”, a forum in which Ana Losada, president of the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB), asked the European authorities for protection: “The discrimination of Spanish in Catalan schools is already a problem for all of Europe and not just for Spain,” said Losada.

"The anguish due to the lack of protection, discrimination and harassment that these children and families suffer on a daily basis is unjustified in a democratic Europe," Pagazaurtundua denounced on that occasion. "It is incredible that Spanish cannot be used as a vehicular language in education in Catalonia. It is absurd in the 21st century," said the vice president of the Civil Liberties Committee.

The Citizens group in the European Parliament has therefore supported the parliamentary mission, which will take place "probably", according to party sources, in December 2023, coinciding with the Spanish presidency of the European Union. Before, in any case, an informative session will be held with different appearances to address the situation of the Spanish language in Catalonia.

The parliamentary mission must allow MEPs to see first-hand how educational centers apply the law that requires that at least 25% of education be taught in Spanish, as the organizations that defend bilingualism have demanded, which have urged Brussels to analyze "the violation of the civil rights of students who have legally requested to study in Spanish and not only in Catalan, and whose rights are annulled."

Last Thursday, the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, who belongs to the liberal group, such as Ciudadanos, asked the president, Pere Aragonès, that the Generalitat comply with the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that obliges that 25% of the classes be in Spanish, during the meeting they held in Brussels.

The PP MEP Rosa Estaràs welcomed the initiative and attributed it to her group: “The Government of Spain is absent in the face of the flagrant attack on the rule of law that the Catalan Generalitat is committing. This mission will make it possible for affected families to be heard across Europe when they claim their children's rights."

From Catalonia, the deputy of Citizens Anna Grau has celebrated the decision: "All those involved in the new wave of institutional Hispanophobia of the Generalitat will have to be accountable to Europe", said the spokeswoman for the regional committee, which has attacked the PSC for "promising the Catalans the opposite of what Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès agreed: skipping the court rulings on 25%". "We look forward to the European mission and we thank Maite Pagaza and the rest of the Citizens in Europe group for their tireless work for the freedom of languages ​​in Catalonia."

The president of the Catalan Civil Society (SCC), Elda Mata, has vindicated the role of constitutionalist associations: "Given the lack of protection of citizens who do abide by the law, SCC has had to go to Europe on repeated occasions", Mata recalled , while he has accused the Government of Spain of "looking the other way" and "avoiding its responsibility in the execution of the sentences", for which it has had to be, in his opinion, the organisms of the European Union "the that they have detected the seriousness of the situation and are taking action on the matter".