Julio García-Aquí Europa
The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament (EP) yesterday urged the Catalan and Spanish authorities to guarantee that in Catalan schools the same treatment is given to Spanish and Catalan “in teaching and curricular hours” and that no child is discriminate against him for being Spanish-speaking.
This is one of the final recommendations of the report on the mission to Catalonia carried out in December 2023 by a dozen MEPs to examine linguistic immersion in the community’s schools, which toughens the tone of the first draft debated in this commission ago. a month and adds, among other warnings, its concern that the Catalan linguistic regime practically limits European freedom of movement.
Deputies from the European People’s Party, Renew Europe and the Conservatives and Reformists groups participated in the mission, but not from the progressive bench, who considered that the meeting agenda was “politicized.” The conservative majority in the European Parliament, including PP, Vox and Ciudadanos, largely supports this report.
The president of PETI, leader of the PP in Parliament and vice-president of the EPP, Dolors Montserrat, was one of the first to react. “The European Parliament report makes it clear that the Generalitat is violating the rights of families and that the Government of Pedro Sánchez does nothing to prevent it,” he stated, and asked the central Executive and the Generalitat to comply with the “equality” that is requested in the document.
The recommendation goes beyond the ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that establishes the obligation that at least 25% of teaching be taught in Spanish to all students in the educational system of Catalonia, the main legal argument put forward. by the families who went to the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament.
The draft already warned about the “lack of measures to apply this judicial ruling” that would push citizens to “request judicial redress for their own case individually”; now, through an approved amendment, “calls on the Catalan authorities not to hinder the execution of this sentence.”
Among the amendments agreed upon to the initial draft, there is also the warning that these necessary measures “cannot in any case imply the exclusion of one of the official languages as a vehicular language” or that non-core subjects (such as physical education) do not They can be equated in this calculation with the teaching of core subjects, such as mathematics or history.
“Educational centers in Catalonia must offer students adequate opportunities to acquire a good command of both Catalan and Spanish, as well as the necessary linguistic knowledge so that they have full access to all work, social and cultural opportunities,” insists the text.
