Yesterday afternoon, at the Casa d'Iberoamerica de Cádiz, within the framework of the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language, a "historic meeting" was held, taking into account those present: for the first time, a table was held in that the people in charge of the academies of the languages spoken in Spain participated. Of all? No. Due to logistical problems, the director of Euskaltzaindia, the Royal Academy of the Basque Language, was unable to attend. But the president of the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC), Teresa Cabré, and the director of the Royal Galician Academy (RAG), Víctor F. Freixanes, were there, summoned by the director of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) , Santiago Muñoz Machado, who declared: "This dialogue between directors can open a way of understanding between languages".
Under the title "Languages and cultures, a common heritage of the Spanish State", the participants presented their points of view, to find solutions to the "multiculturality and plurilingualism" of the Peninsula, in the words of Cabré, since "politics sometimes does not know how to solve coexistence problems", said Machado: "Culture and language offer opportunities that are not sufficiently explored".
The director of the RAE explained the legal framework that regulates Spanish, "the name under which it appears in the Constitution", and the other languages of Spain, which are included in the statutes of each community, and he did not want to enter "in the problems that sometimes exist with some languages and dialects of how they should be treated according to their communities". Machado, a lawyer by training, also mentioned the charter of European languages, which protects "those that are not the general languages of their countries". And he referred to the concept of "linguistic normalization" included in the statutes, "because they were languages that had historically been discriminated against". The director of the RAE insisted that "this positive discrimination is in line with the Constitution", and mentioned the rulings of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court that support it. "Despite what appears in some media, there is no legal violation in the laws of these communities."
For her part, the president of the IEC asked herself: "How can we structure linguistic coexistence in Spain? Spain is a multilingual and plurinational state, but it is asymmetrical". And he proposed some solutions: "Diversity is a cultural asset and linguistic plurality is biodiversity and is a cultural heritage that must be preserved. If the reality is like this and we defend these values, why don't we get them to be respected and valued in Spain?".
Cabré set out four factors that can improve this situation: "There is a lack of generalized discourse of this plurilingualism as an asset to be preserved. There is a lack of education from childhood in favor of teaching this plurality and multilingualism. Protection and respect measures are missing: if we believe in these principles and these premises, we must defend them and that there are no attacks against this multilingualism. And more symbolic acts are needed, like today's".
Finally, the director of the RAG said: "The Galician language is used by the majority, but it has not had the prestige and support of the authorities. Diglossia creates self-censorship of the speaker himself when he has to take a step further. Galician society lived for centuries on subsistence, therefore, it was not possible to go further. Only when the surplus arrives, the value of the language is projected", thanks to the Galicians who travel to America and finance cultural projects from there. Today, "the Galician dictionary has 130,000 daily queries", he announced.
Yesterday's meeting was perhaps the first stone, which was placed from the world of culture, to overcome the problems of linguistic coexistence in Pell de Brau.
