Coup at the table of Esquerra Republicana, PSC and En Comú Podem. The three formations are willing to approve without Junts per Catalunya the modification of the Language Policy Law, to try to preserve immersion in Catalan education, next week.
The three groups give JxCat 24 hours to return to the initial consensus on that reform or reach a new one. If this circumstance does not occur, they will take to an extraordinary meeting of spokespersons a request for an extension of the agenda for the next plenary session. Even without the help of Junts, socialists, republicans and common people can modify the agenda and carry out the proposal; a fact that, without a doubt, would bring more tension to the already complicated relationship of the two partners of the Government.
The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) set last week a period of 15 working days, which expires on May 31, to apply the ruling that dictates that 25% of classes in Catalan classrooms must be in Castilian. For this reason, the three groups believe that it is necessary to approve the reform in the next plenary session, before the time decreed by the Catalan high court runs out.
"Next week, yes or yes will be debated to shield Catalan," parliamentary sources from the three formations point out. "He has to go to the next plenary session. We cannot wait any longer. They have had the amendments for a month and the only thing they ask for is time. They have not presented any proposal," these sources lament.
Junts sent a letter yesterday to the Parliamentary Board to withdraw its signature in the registry of the proposal to modify the Law on Language Policy at the end of March, which barely had the support of the party for a few hours. On the same day that the initiative had been presented and registered, at night, Junts froze its support for the reform by verifying that it did not have the social consensus that, in its opinion, the matter requires. The entities that promote Catalan, such as Plataforma per la Llengua or Som Escola, had opposed it, as had part of the educational community, such as USTEC.
In addition, from JxCat they have stressed that with the proposal agreed on March 24, although the regulatory framework is adapted to the sentence and the door is opened to overcome it in a certain way, immersion is not shielded and it is not guaranteed that the sentence remains on wet paper, just as they intend.
For this reason, the formation announced yesterday that its proposal to try to preserve immersion goes through a decree law that grants the Department of Education the competence to approve the educational projects in linguistic matters of each center, so that, according to its spokesman , Josep Rius, the teachers and the management of the centers would be "protected" from any responsibility before the sentence of the TSJC, for eventual disobedience. With this decree law, which would affect the Catalan Education Law of 2009, the modification of the Language Policy Law would be left in a drawer.
The Government, for now, is working on a decree different from the one prepared by the Minister of the branch, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray. The parliamentary spokesperson for Junts, Mònica Sales, has shaken off the ultimatum of the other three formations and has highlighted that the Republicans, in the Generalitat, welcome the JxCat proposal. However, Sales has not closed the door to "other legal alternatives."
On Thursday of last week, after several weeks of discreet negotiations, Junts, with the unanimous agreement of its permanent secretariat, dropped completely from the reform and yesterday revealed its plans.
However, despite the fact that ERC says that it does not rule out any scenario, the path advocated by Junts does not convince the other formations, who say that they have not received their proposal; although the spokeswoman for the Government, Patrícia Plaja, has admitted in the press conference after the meeting of the Consell Executiu that a proposal was delivered. Since the formation of Carles Puigdemont, the letter was sent in the first place to the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and to his partner in the Government, the republican formation.
The Catalan Executive, for its part, will present a judicial appeal to try to challenge the content of the TSJC's interlocutory last week and is working on other parallel channels. Another actor that could have a role in this story is the CUP, which has not seen Junts' proposal, but points out that the measure defended by ERC, PSC and the commons does not shield linguistic immersion, despite the fact that the three groups ensure it .
Ciudadanos considers that the proposed reform is not feasible and will require clarity both through parliament and the courts. According to the spokesman, Nacho Martín Blanco, what the groups negotiating the legal amendment intend is to circumvent the TSJC ruling in an "incredible shell game."
In this sense, the Citizens deputy has stressed that what his party defends is something "as simple" as compliance with the judicial resolution, so that Catalan citizens, also Catalan-speakers, can have an "educated" education and in a "high register" in Spanish.
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