The Socialist Parliamentary Group has announced this Wednesday that it will present an initiative in committee in the Cortes of Castilla y León to urge the Board to present a bill that regulates the "protection, promotion and use" of the Leonese language, as they recall that includes the Statute of Autonomy.
This was explained this Wednesday at a press conference by Yolanda Sacristán and Diego Moreno, PSOE attorneys for the province of León. They have criticized that the Junta de Castilla y León has not protected or regulated Leonese "to date", which they consider to be in breach of the Statute, last modified in 2007.
The representatives of the PSOE have recalled that the basic institutional norm of the community states that Leonese will be "object of specific protection by the institutions due to its particular value" and establishes that its "protection, promotion and use will be subject to regulation."
For this reason, as Yolanda Sacristán has emphasized, what they propose is "as simple as the Board complying with the Law", something that they criticize that it has not done in recent decades "in breach of its basic rule", because it has warned that "every "Every day that passes without doing so, our language gets a little closer to its disappearance".
Meanwhile, they warn, Leonese, a language that is currently estimated to be spoken by 25,000 people in the northern and western areas of the provinces of León and Zamora, is in "unstoppable decline." Sacristán recalled that in 2010 UNESCO already indicated that it was a language "in danger of extinction" but the Board, he regrets, "remains unmoved." Thus, he has speculated that the regional government seems to be waiting for the Leonese to "disappear."
Diego Moreno recalled that in that year the socialist attorney José Ignacio Martín Benito already raised a proposal in this sense in the regional Parliament that was supported "with a unanimous vote" of the chamber, but "14 years later nothing has been done", Just as the budget amendments presented by the PSOE to improve the protection of the Leonese language have been recalled, which have been rejected pending the debate of those corresponding to the 2024 regional accounts.
Moreno has specified that the bill should be a legal regulation that protects Leonese "especially in areas where it is still spoken." Furthermore, he has mentioned the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, which encourages this language to be offered as an "integral" part of the curriculum, "at least as a subject."
In the event that the autonomous Government does not promote this legal regulation project within a period of six months, the PSOE will be "obliged" to present a Non-Law Proposal.
On the other hand, Sacristán has drawn attention to several issues, such as that all autonomous communities "with their own linguistic heritage and recognition of the same in their statutes" regulate the protection of their languages "except Castilla y León" through an autonomous law, while developing protection measures and ensuring their teaching within the educational system.
In this sense, the PSOE attorneys have highlighted that the Junta de Castilla y León does comply with the reference in the Statute to "respect and protection" for Galician in the El Bierzo area, through collaboration with the Xunta so that teachers of This autonomy teaches language classes, while "Leonese is abandoned."
"We have no problem with this, but no resources should be withdrawn so that the Leonese is promoted and protected, even more so when the Galician does not seem to be at risk, unlike the Leonese," Moreno stated.
The initiative is signed by the four socialist parliamentarians from León—Sacristán, Moreno, Nuria Rubio and Javier Campos—and José Ignacio Martín Benito from Zamora.
