Yesterday, the Generalitat asked the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to declare the "legal impossibility" of applying the sentence that it imposed in its day to introduce Spanish in 25% of teaching hours.
The petition, signed by the Generalitat's lawyer, argues that the decree approved on Monday by the Catalan Executive does not set percentages, in fact it rejects them exhaustively, and consequently it is "incompatible" with the ruling of December 16, 2020 that requires to teach that percentage of classes in Spanish.
The document highlights the existence of a new regulatory framework after the court ruling and goes into the background by replying that "as constitutional and statutory" is a model that regulates the use of languages through percentages such as the one that opts for a model "totally different ” as does the decree approved on Monday.
As a result of this decree, yesterday the Government sent an instruction to the directors of the centers in accordance with the decree law. In it, it does not order 25% of Spanish and the Department of Education assumes responsibility for the adaptation of linguistic projects.
But the legal petition transferred to the TSJC shows that neither the law agreed between four groups –PSC, ERC, Junts and the commons– nor the decree law approved by the Catalan executive –which did not have the approval of the PSC– are going to remove the Catalan language issue from the courts.
In fact, on the contrary, it will go further. Yesterday PP and Vox announced that they will take the decree law to the Constitutional Court (TC) once it has been validated by the Parliament. It was the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who announced the appeal of his party, reproaching the Generalitat for "disrupting the rule of law" while "the government looks the other way".
The ultra-nationalists proposed the application of article 155 in Catalonia in the face of the "umpteenth breach" of the judicial rulings and announced a lawsuit for disobedience against "those responsible for the Government", still to be determined. And from Cs, its president Inés Arrimadas goes to Barcelona today to file a complaint with the TSJC Prosecutor's Office "for the breach of the Government" of 25%.
The Government, through the mouth of the Minister of Education Pilar Alegría, yesterday insisted on the need to comply with the sentences in the face of the measures adopted by the Government, in not using the language as a throwing weapon and in ensuring the linguistic competence of children.
The party that will act before the TSJC to rule on the Government's response to the sentence is the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB), an association that has supported family complaints that demanded more Spanish in schools, which today will present a writing indicating that neither the decree law approved on Monday nor the instructions of Educació comply with the demands of the court.
In the instruction of Minister Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, who yesterday avoided speaking of disobedience, the centers must complete a questionnaire to certify that their language projects comply with current regulations (with the decree law), so that once validated, the directors will remain exempt from legal liability in court. And given the mistrust shown by some directions for the solution provided, the department will meet with the school directors tomorrow to explain the legal coverage.
For its part, Platform for the Language and the Ustec and Intersindical teachers' unions have asked the TSJC to annul the sentence for "a very serious infraction" in the election of one of the judges in the case.
