The sentence that forced to take 25% of the subjects in Spanish in Catalan schools will not be applied next year. The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) considers that the sentence cannot be applied after the Parliament approved, with the support of ERC, Junts, PSC and En Comú Podem, the Catalan law, and the decree law (without the PSC) about its use in schools.
The TSJC confirms that in this new legal scenario, the 25% ruling cannot be applied, despite the fact that it expresses its doubts about the constitutionality of the approved regulations. This is established in a ruling issued on Friday, July 1 by section 5 of the administrative litigation chamber of the TSJC.
"Both regulations determine the legal impossibility of executing the sentence passed, being so that serious doubts are raised about its validity due to unconstitutionality", maintains the Chamber. Due to these doubts, the court has urged the prosecution and the rest of the parties to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court. In the event that this is the case, the final resolution may be extended over time. President Pere Aragonès celebrated as a "victory" that the sentence has been suspended, although he added that it was a "partial" victory, since the new laws can go to the TC.
After the ruling of the TSJC, the Government approved a decree that set the criteria for the linguistic projects of the centers and that excluded the application of proportions or percentages in the teaching and use of languages. In addition, the Parliament approved the law on the use and learning of official languages in education. In this sense, the court highlights that the Government's decree prevents the establishment of "a minimum percentage of vehicular use of one and another official language", which contradicts the sentence passed. And on the other hand, the approved law defines Spanish as "curricular language", while the sentence recognized it as "vehicular language".
For all these reasons, for the court "both legal norms define a linguistic model in the school environment that is incompatible with the parameters taken into consideration in the sentence". The judges, in fact, state that their sentence "responds to the model of linguistic conjunction, while the enacted regulations define a model based on a correlation between both official languages incompatible with the model that was taken into consideration when the appeal was resolved." The court insists that it is a situation that “suddenly” prevents the execution of the sentence due to legal regulations that “raise doubts of unconstitutionality.” And he cites seven articles that could have been violated.
The president of the Assembly for a Bilingual School, Ana Losada, yesterday regretted the decision of the TSJC and asked the Spanish Government to "act", presenting an appeal of unconstitutionality against the decree law or the law of the Parliament. That would be contradictory with the position of the State lawyer who defends before the TSJC that the new legal framework –due to what was approved in Parliament– alters the one that was in force at the time of the ruling.
Upon learning of the TSJC's resolution, the Minister of Education, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, said that this is "a first victory and great news" and "the first step for 25% to be applied in any classroom." "Today's victory strengthens the Catalan school model," he added. Educació is studying how to cancel 25% in the centers where it is already being applied at the request of a family.
For its part, Aragonès announced that the Generalitat will send the TC the opinions of the Council of Statutory Guarantees that guarantee the constitutionality of both the law and the decree. "We managed to assert the pedagogical, academic and educational criteria to defend Catalan at school," he wrote in a tweet.
The PSC was convinced of the constitutionality of the law that ensures that "it also guarantees the use of Spanish in the classroom" and that, like Aragonès, recalled that it has the approval of the Council of Guarantees. For the PSC, the legal agreement must now be finalized with clearer instructions for teachers regarding the curricular use of Spanish.
Junts celebrated that the TSJC is "out of the game", although its spokesman, Josep Rius, was cautious: "A battle has been won, not the war".
