The municipalities of Elx, Crevillent and Santa Pola form the region of Baix Vinalopó and, according to the Valencian Use and Education Law of 1983, they are considered municipal terms of Valencian linguistic predominance. However, the results of the Survey on the use and knowledge of Valencian and linguistic attitudes in Baix Vinalopó confirm a low level of knowledge of the co-official language, similar - explains the Valencian Academy of Language, promoter of the work- which appears for Alicante in the survey published by the Generalitat Valenciana at the end of 2022, although with a percentage of the population that is able to speak it well or perfectly close to 50%.
Thus, the study reports, the southernmost Valencian-speaking region is suffering an evident process of reduction in its number of speakers generated by the phenomenon of substitution by another dominant language, in addition to other structural factors that favor the phenomenon. Lluís Catalá, author of the work and professor at the University of Alicante, explains that the region is in "an absolute emergency situation" with a "general decline" in the use of its own language, which the political situation does not help. Only Crevillent has better data.
Given this situation, the work indicates that "it continues to be necessary to mobilize the faculty, the families of students and civil society in favor of implementing multilingual programs with a greater presence of Valencian in early childhood, primary and secondary education." A circumstance that may be impossible given that the parliamentary groups of PP and Vox have presented a bill in Les Corts to change the Multilingualism Law. Now, the adoption of Valencian as the base language of education will be in the hands of the parents.
For this reason, the section of the study that refers to linguistic attitudes is of special interest, where a relative diversity has been detected, although attitudes within the spectrum of negative responses slightly dominate. The general opinion is that one is not patently against the language, but it is considered that its learning and use does not have to be mandatory, especially because Spanish is a language with much more presence and that everyone knows.
In its balance of results, the survey shows that, as expected, knowledge of Valencian is far from being universal in Baix Vinalopó. In fact, oral competence - 5.5 (on a scale of 0 to 10) - is far from the higher levels (values 8 to 10), which are usually associated with sufficient speaker confidence that promotes its use. The average written competence is still below sufficiency (4.55); Of course, the average of 6.8 in the ability to understand Valencian opens up many options for passive uses. A small door to the hope of reversing the trend.
The study also highlights that the most common way of acquiring Valencian is at school (22.7%), or, jointly, at home from a young age and through formal means (19.1%).
Thus, in Baix Vinalopó, 15.5% of the population declare Valencian as their initial language, in addition to the 12.6% who declare themselves initial bilingual. In these parameters, the study observes a certain decline in Valencian, because a part of those who have Valencian as their initial language later also begin to identify with Spanish.
In relation to family linguistic uses, the authors of the survey observe that "Valencian is decreasing generation after generation, but above all in favor of bilingual uses, rather than in favor of Spanish as the exclusive language, a circumstance that would further aggravate the situation." of high minoritization".
