The PSC, Esquerra, Junts and the commons have practically ready an agreement on the Catalan language that would respond to the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC). "The fine print is missing," they admit from all formations. "It's a matter of hours," he points out, for example, also from ERC. If there are no last-minute changes, this response will be twofold: through a law approved in Parliament, most likely by single reading and by way of urgency, and through a decree law of the Government. The second is mainly intended to cover the directors of educational centers against any "judicial interference" and to explicitly reject the imposition of percentages of languages. The latest draft of the parliamentary law develops how these projects should be and indicates that Catalan is "the language normally used as the vehicular and learning language of the educational system and the language of normal use in the reception of newly arrived students", as La Vanguardia advanced on Friday.
The implementation or processing of both the law and the decree law is urgent, since the TSJC set May 31 as the deadline for the execution of the sentence of 25% of Castilian. But this afternoon ERC and Junts have been completely optimistic about it. Marta Vilalta, spokesperson for the Republicans, has stressed that her formation "is now optimistic." For Vilalta, with the pact that is being finalized, the consensus is "rebuilt" that began to break on March 24, when Junts dropped the reform of the Language Policy law that he had signed together with the PSC, ERC and the commons.
Vilalta has valued "everyone's effort" to rebuild the consensus. “We believe that we are very close to reaching agreement with the law and the decree law”, he pointed out before giving his opinion that “with one last effort in the next few hours we will be able to rebuild this consensus”. “We are close to an agreement; Now the fine print needs to be specified”, he concluded.
Josep Rius, spokesman for JxCat, has also brimmed with positivism. Like Vilalta, he has celebrated that a double response has been prepared in the form of a decree law and a new ad hoc law, at the same time that, according to what he said, that reform of the Language Policy Law has been abandoned. "The text maintains Catalan as the vehicular language of education and does not provide more presence of Spanish than is already provided for in the current legal system", he has detailed. In addition, he has highlighted that the double proposal includes that it be Education that is responsible for the linguistic projects.
"Both in the decree and in the law, the introduction of quotas is rejected because it is pedagogically unacceptable," Rius stressed, despite the fact that other sources affirm that this rejection of numerical proportions is only explicitly included in the Government's decree law. Be that as it may, Junts trusts that another complementary measure, that of introducing amendments to the Celaá law in Congress. However, opening this melon seems difficult due to the refusal of the Socialists to reformulate a regulation promoted relatively recently.
Different impressions are expressed among the rest of the forces involved in the negotiations. In Comú Podem is as optimistic as ERC and Junts about the viability of the agreement, but the PSC avoids giving clues and reaffirms, for the moment, the agreement of March 24.
The spokesman for the commons, Joan Mena, has indicated at a press conference that they see the agreement on Catalan "very close" and has urged to give "one last push" to the negotiations to settle it if possible this Monday. But the Socialists have come to cool down this optimism by pointing out the "indispensable" need for Castilian to be the language of learning, as it appeared in the pact signed in March.
The deputy first secretary of the PSC, Lluïsa Moret, has warned that only with a formula along these lines will it be possible to "comply" with the ruling of the TSJC on 25% of Spanish in the classrooms and, although the socialists participate in the negotiations that have been dragging on since last week, they are not willing "to give up what we believe is best for Catalonia". That is why at this time, the socialists do not take the agreement for granted and refer to the one that already existed. "There is already an agreement that includes Catalan and Spanish as vehicular languages" and that "responds better to the sentence", Moret remarked.
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