The party of the former Minister of Culture and current MEP Clara Ponsatí, Alhora, has presented a proposal for a shock plan in defense of the Catalan language that, among other measures, contemplates ending the current system of linguistic immersion in Catalan public schools and creating a double network of schools depending on the language of schooling.
Ponsatí has denounced that “Catalan politics lives on the fiction that linguistic immersion exists: it has been false for decades; the same ones that our politicians, in a demographically complex moment, have made inaction their daily life,” declared Clara Ponsatí, head of the party's list for the 12-M elections, according to a statement released by the same party. For Alhora, this represents "a very serious setback for schools in Catalan" and believes that correcting this crisis necessarily requires "changing the country's educational model with a shock plan."
Among the proposals of this plan, the one of a new school network that guarantees the right to an education 100% in Catalan, without distinctions of origin or social extraction, for all families that wish to do so stands out. “It happens all over the country, children come home speaking Spanish. The school Spanishizes them instead of Catalanizing them,” denounced Jordi Graupera, co-founder of Alhora. In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Graupera added that 85% of schools do not do immersion and 83% of institutes do not either. In his opinion, the immersion "has been ruined by the governments of the last 30 years."
According to the extra-parliamentary independence party, this change in model would expand the impact of immersion, from the current 15% of schools and 17% of institutes that, in their opinion, today effectively practice it, up to 30% at the outset, and it would not with a double line in each school, but with a double network throughout the country. “The reason for opting for the double network is based on the conviction that linguistic immersion is only effective if it exceeds the limits of the classroom and is extended to patios, dining rooms and the rest of the spaces of the school life of the country's students. ”Argues Ponsatí.
To reinforce the learning of Catalan in non-immersive schools, Alhora proposes providing these centers with both external evaluation processes and financing incentives for those schools that achieve the established objectives. The final objective of this measure is, according to Alhora, "to return its prestige to the Catalan school, making it the guarantor of the rights and opportunities of the students."
This Alhora proposal includes five other proposals: paid Catalan language and culture courses for people who have not been educated in Catalan, the incorporation in the next decade of up to 5,000 new Catalan language teachers, requirement of knowledge and use of Catalan by all public servants, the extinction of subsidies for productions and media that are not entirely in Catalan, and the favoring of companies that prioritize communication in Catalan with employees and clients.
