Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, yesterday received in Madrid the conseller (Minister) of Foreign Affairs of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Jaume Duch, with whom he committed, among other issues, to strengthen the Catalan language in the European Union.
This is the first meeting between Albares and Duch, former spokesperson and general director of Communications of the European Parliament, who on August 12 took office as minister of the new Catalan Government headed by the socialist Salvador Illa. The meeting took place at the headquarters of the Ministry in Marqués de Salamanca, in Madrid, and was attended by the Secretary of State for the European Union, Fernando Sampedro.
According to the Generalitat itself through the social network X, during the meeting, Albares and Duch agreed to “strengthen the presence of Catalonia in international forums and reinforce the Catalan language in Europe and in the world.”
The modification of the European linguistic regime to make Catalan official, together with Basque and Galician, within the European Union was one of the commitments between the president of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the Catalan independentists of Junts to obtain their support in the investiture vote.
The Government therefore took advantage of the last Spanish Presidency of the EU Council (second half of 2023) to introduce the issue in four consecutive meetings of the General Affairs Council (19 September, 24 October, 15 November and 12 December 2023), in two of which even Albares appeared, something unusual in this type of meeting.
Despite this insistence, the four meetings concluded without any concrete decision, except for the commitment of the imminent Belgian Presidency to “advance the work on Spain’s request during its mandate”. However, the question of languages was conspicuous by its absence from the agenda of all the General Affairs Councils of the Belgian semester and the issue has remained stalled since then due to the legal, financial and political doubts of several Member States.
On 24 June, Albares met with his Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, to discuss how to move forward on this objective during the current Hungarian Presidency of the EU Council. Hungary’s ambassador to the EU, Bálint Ódor, declared at the same time that, in principle, his country has no intention of discussing Spain’s proposal during its Presidency.
