While the official status of Catalan, Basque and Galician is being debated in the EU, their use in the parliaments of Catalonia, Euskadi and Galicia has evolved hand in hand with the sociolinguistic changes in each territory and the political debate. Castilian has only gained presence in the Catalan chamber.
In the Parliament, and since the constitution of the Chamber in 1980, the use of Catalan has decreased. The change of trend in a chamber of almost absolute predominance of Catalan for more than two decades came hand in hand with the emergence of Ciudadanos in 2006, whose political banner was the opposition to the language policy of the Generalitat.
According to data from the Parliament, in the first legislature of the 135 deputies, six used Spanish in their interventions (3 from the PSC, 1 from Centristes, and 2 from the Andalusian group), 4.4%. The normalization of the use of the Catalan language made Spanish practically disappear from the chamber, which returned along with the political debate. In 1996, it was the PP deputy Julio Ariza who again addressed the plenary session in Spanish, and caused about twenty nationalist deputies to leave the chamber.
But it is the arrival of Ciudadanos that begins to modify the scenario beyond specific interventions. Already in the 12th legislature, which began after the 2017 elections and the impact of the process, around thirty deputies used Spanish (PSC, En Comú Podem, the PP and Ciudadanos), reaching 22.2%. In the current legislature, and with the entry of Vox, it reaches 30%.
As for the Basque Country, its complex sociolinguistic reality, with great differences in the knowledge and use of Basque according to territories and also from a generational point of view, is reflected in the Basque Parliament. Linguistic coexistence has been channeled for four decades through the simultaneous translation system, which has logically been modernized. The parliamentarians intervene, according to their decision, in Basque, Spanish or in both languages - it is common for them to intersperse them - and the parliamentarians who do not understand Basque use simultaneous translation, a system that can also be used by citizens following the sessions.
In the current Basque Parliament, the most Basque-speaking in terms of its composition, a dozen of the 75 parliamentarians always use the translation system because they do not understand Basque. The rest, the other 65, master the two co-official languages or at least understand them. Specifically, of the 75 parliamentarians, 55 can speak in both languages; a dozen understand Basque, although they do not have the competence to intervene on the stand (they do not usually use translation); and 10 other parliamentarians always use the translation. There are notable differences between groups in the treatment of languages. The Basque-Spanish translation system is also used in the Parliament of Navarra.
Although the Regulations of the Parliament of Galicia establish bilingualism in its operation, in practice in its almost 42 years of existence it has operated, with very few exceptions, in a monolingual regime in the language of Galicia. The Official Gazette of Parliament publishes the texts of the approved laws in Spanish and Galician. The initiatives of the political groups are always written in Galician, the language used in the debates. Ciudadanos, whose candidate spoke in the 2016 TVG debate in Spanish, was never represented. Nor Vox, so they could not break the consensus in parliamentary uses.
Yes, there have been monolingual speakers in Spanish, like the later mayor of Ferrol Juan Juncal. The most famous was Mariano Rajoy, as vice president of the Xunta between 1986 and 1987. The opposition was scandalized because he did it in the name of the Galician Government. The nationalist Xosé Manuel Beiras responded to him in French and when he was warned, he wanted to avail himself of the same right to speak in “a foreign language.”
