“This is the temple of the word,” stressed the president of Congress, Francina Armengol. And the word, in Spain, is expressed in Spanish, and also in Catalan, Basque and Galician. Now also in the Lower House, “to make us understand the citizens who listen to us,” defended the Balearic Armengol. With full “democratic normality,” according to her, it was endorsed by a large absolute parliamentary majority.
“Diversity is not detrimental to unity, uniformity does not guarantee cohesion,” Xosé Ramón Gómez Besteiro, socialist deputy for Lugo and former leader of the PSdeG, then claimed, who celebrated the honor of being the first parliamentarian to be able to use from the tribune of the Carrera de San Jerónimo palace, and without any restrictions, his mother tongue, Galician, to “normalize in this Chamber what is already normal for millions of citizens.”
“A historic day,” agreed many of the parliamentary spokespersons who spoke yesterday in this first plenary session of a multilingual legislature. The president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, also used this adjective for this day at the doors of Congress before the session started.
Despite the opposition of the Popular Party and the loud protest of the far-right Vox, the Congress of Deputies thus successfully inaugurated – technically and, above all, political – a legislature whose path is still uncertain, but whose claim to be the first multilingual He passed his first exam with flying colors yesterday. No incident was recorded in the simultaneous translation and subtitling of the co-official languages, nor in the use of headphones, despite the rush of time to organize the technical deployment.
And it was the first plenary session in which their honors could debate in Spanish, but also in Catalan, Basque and Galician without any impediment. On this occasion, the proposal to reform the regulations of the Lower House is taken into consideration, which will allow deputies to do so, with complete normality, in all their parliamentary activity from now on. Also in the investiture debate to which the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will appear next week, which will give way, if he fails as planned, to the turn of the leader of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez.
The absolute majority of 178 votes added by the groups proposing the initiative – the PSOE, Sumar, Esquerra, EH Bildu, the PNV and the BNG –, with the support of Junts per Catalunya, opened the doors wide to this first multilingual legislature in Spain, despite the opposition of the PP and the abandonment of the far-right Vox chamber. The Congressional reform law proposal thus passed its first step – taking it into consideration – with 176 votes in favor and 169 against. Its express processing, in a single reading, added an even larger absolute majority of 179 votes in favor, by adding the yes of the Canarian Coalition, and 171 against: those of the PP, Vox and UPN. The Lower House will give final approval to the reform in the vote next Thursday.
Not without opposition from the right. Even before the Galician socialist Besteiro took the floor in his language, which he alternated with Spanish, the PP spokesperson, Cuca Gamarra, sitting next to the also Galician Feijóo, raised a point of order to the president of Congress, to demand the compliance with the law. According to what she denounced, the use of all co-official languages was launched in this plenary session before the law that will allow it is taken into consideration, debated, voted on and published in the BOE.
President Armengol replied that the reconsideration proposed by the PP could not stop the plenary session, which thus continued its course. Then, the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, rose from his seat and left the chamber, followed by all the far-right deputies. As they left, they contemptuously threw their headphones onto Pedro Sánchez's empty seat, and many ended up on the floor, so that the ushers had to scramble to pick them up.
The socialist Besteiro was then able to continue his intervention, and was congratulated that, despite the protest from the right, what he considered "a certain historical anomaly" was overcome, and that Spain and its institutions can advance, expressly, in the recognition of their multilingual reality.
Sumar's spokesperson, Marta Lois, also spoke in Galician, alternating with Spanish. “The possibility of speaking in one language does not negate the others,” she defended. And the ERC spokesperson, Gabriel Rufián, then celebrated that he can now express his speech, in its entirety, in Catalan. “Do you see how speaking in other languages is not so bad, that we break with the right?” Rufián ironically said.
Mertxe Aizpurua (EH Bildu) and Joseba Agirretxea (PNV) then spoke in their same mother tongue, Basque. “Those who have left are the same ones who previously kicked us out of class, fined us or put us in jail for speaking Basque. Now they are gone. We have made some progress,” Agirretxea celebrated after the departure of the Vox deputies. And the BNG spokesperson, Nestor Rego, also did so in Galician, with another intervention entirely in his own language.
In the interventions against the reform of the Congressional regulations, the PP's strategy was, to say the least, contradictory. After Gamarra rejected on behalf of his group the use of co-official languages before the law had been approved, Borja Sémper took the stand and made part of his intervention in Basque.
The Vox deputies returned to their seats, it is understood that as a gesture of deference to the PP, but upon hearing Sémper speak in Basque, they once again left the chamber in a hurry. The popular deputy defended, in Spanish and Basque, linguistic diversity in Spain, but accused the proponents of the initiative, and particularly the PSOE, of “disdaining the common language.”
Sémper thus defended “the coexistence of languages without confrontation” and rejected the “interested patrimonialization” of co-official languages in this debate. “In Spain we are lucky to have a common language, which is Spanish,” Sémper concluded. He said it in Spanish and also in Basque, despite the fact that the day before he warned that the PP would not play “the hell out of it” in this plenary session.
