The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has recognized the right of a student from the Turó del Drac school in Canet de Mar (El Maresme) to receive in Spanish a "main" subject or competence apart from the Spanish language, which It also considers the vehicular language of the school. The court's ruling, which refuses to indicate proportions such as 25% of the school hours, guarantees this situation to the minor while she is enrolled in the Catalan educational system.
The Minister of Education, Anna Simó, has accused the court of acting with an “unacceptable political bias” and of applying percentages covertly. "The TSJC does not care about education laws, pedagogy, or sociolinguistics," said the head of the department that will appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court.
At the end of 2021, the TSJC decreed that 25% of Spanish be taught in a P5 classroom as a precautionary measure after a family complained, a decision that generated a lot of commotion, tension and indignation in the vast majority of families at the educational center. provoking mobilizations in defense of Catalan.
The Chamber argues that, after analyzing the information provided by the center's management and the center's linguistic project, the presence of Spanish is "residual." It avoids determining percentages but expands its use to "an area of knowledge, key competence, subject or subject that, due to its importance in the entire curriculum and its teaching load, can be considered main."
This ruling does not contravene Catalan legislation that prevents the application of percentages throughout the educational system, maintains the court, which is considered competent to decide in cases of an individual, exceptional and subsidiary nature. And it understands, due to legal mandates, that Spanish cannot be excluded as a "vehicular language" and that a "reasonable presence" or a "pattern of balance or equality between languages" must be respected.
For the TSJC, not only does this justify its ruling in the Canet case, but its decision is supported by the regional legislation approved in 2022 on the decree and law on the use of languages in school. This "does not completely displace Spanish, from the moment its educational and curricular use is contemplated."
And the mother of the minor demands that her daughter receive education in the Spanish language "with a certain intensity of use." The magistrates had interpreted this intensity as 25% of the school schedule.
Therefore, even though it disagrees with Catalan legislation, since the TSJC appealed to the Constitutional Court both the decree and the law because it understood that it opposed the model of linguistic conjunction of the Constitution, it found justification in it to order Turó del Drac to increase the presence of Spanish after the director of the center presented the use of languages in the school and considered that it was "adequate" for us.
He reiterates that the appeal does not raise the general situation of the Catalan education system, but rather the specific situation of that minor. "What is really decisive is the possibility of jurisdictionally guaranteeing the student a minimum teaching use of Spanish in a specific center, which, ultimately, is what is intended here."
The TSJC rejects, however, the challenge to the linguistic project. "The linguistic project, as well as the labeling of the center, are decisions of the educational center, which has recognized autonomy," she specifies. Another thing is that the ruling affects the linguistic project, as already happened after the adoption of the precautionary measures.
In this way, the appeal of the parents of a girl against the decision of the Department of Education, which wanted to deny it, is only partially upheld, since the TSJC rejects the rest of the appeal and avoids talking about percentages in the classroom. Likewise, it maintains the center's linguistic project.
The reason why the court increases the use of Spanish in Canet derives from the linguistic project and the explanation from the center's management about the use of languages in its classrooms. Thus, Turó del Drac redefined the linguistic project in 2019 and, in the 2021 and 2022 academic year, after the precautionary measures, updated the sociolinguistic survey of its students.
The director expressed to the court the difficulty of quantifying the use of one language or another because it is used in different contexts and materials and the magistrates understand that the director "does not clarify the issue" nor did the fact that she stated help the magistrates that "the sociolinguistic reality of the center conditions what happens in the classrooms and that teaching models have evolved towards flexible teaching proposals."
Thus, the TSJC relies on the information from the center's linguistic project, which indicates that Catalan is the vehicular language of all teaching and learning activities and a vehicle of expression for the different academic, organizational, administrative and relationship activities. And it is the language in which work is done in all areas, except English and Spanish language and literature, which are taught three hours a week.
In 1st grade, in the class of the student whose family appealed to the court, and due to precautionary measures, of the 4 hours of mathematics, 3.25 are in Spanish and 0.75 in Catalan.
Regarding the sociolinguistic context, it is stated that the vast majority of students have Catalan as their mother tongue and that in non-formal education spaces (courtyards, outings, neighborhoods), students mainly use Catalan as their language of communication.
The oral and written activities, the teachers' presentation, the teaching materials, the textbooks and the evaluation activities are in the Catalan language. The vehicular language in the field of extracurricular activities and dining is also Catalan.
Spanish is introduced in 1st grade orally and in 2nd grade it begins in writing.
Regarding the update of the sociolinguistic context of the center carried out two years ago, a decrease in Catalan as the mother tongue from 60% to 45% is specified, although there are bilingual students. Therefore, 57% of the students speak Catalan at home. Spanish speakers are 30%, while the rest speak other languages. With the schedules provided by the director, the TSJC considers that "the established pattern is not met," and that the presence of Spanish is "residual."
