Language Research

4. Minority groups: To what extent are minority groups in this country disadvantaged by their language?

Updated (November 2002)

PUNISHING CHILDREN FOR SPEAKING ASTURIAN

The Constitutional Court, the highest judicial institution in Spain, has decided that punishing a child for speaking Asturian, the minority language spoken by around 450,000 people in the northwestern part of the country, is not an illegal activity. The high court thus confirmed two previous decisions of a court in the Asturian village of Villavicionsa and a provincial court about this issue.

All children “caught” speaking Asturian in a religious school in Villavicionsa were punished with a 25-peseta fine (about 16 cents). This practice was carried out until it was denounced by some parents a few years ago.

“Andecha Astur,” an active cultural movement, then brought this case to court; however, their initiative has failed, as the Constitutional Court is the highest institution in the country. According to this organization, the Constitutional court's decision is simply a practical paraphrasing of the government's linguistic policy, stating that Spanish is the only official language in Spain. However, Andecha Astur decided not to surrender and will bring this case to European institutions in the near future.

Roberto González-Quevedo, the secretary of another organization, “the Asturian Language Academy,” said this shows that Asturian is a repressed language in its own territory.

However, the Language Academy is cautious regarding the actual facts that led to this sentence. According to González-Quevedo, it is obvious that something happened in the school, but once the case became public the school called them several times to assure them that they respect the Asturian language and that even some teachers are studying it. This is why the Academy criticizes the court's decision rather than the alleged punishment of the children.

Source: Eurolang News, Bilbao, November 4, 2002, by Jaume Clotet, http://217.136.252.147/webpub/eurolang/pajenn.asp?ID=3909

Top of page

Updated (October 2003)

COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE SPANISH STATE FOR DISCRIMINATING THE CATALAN LANGUAGE

According to several institutions, the Spanish state hinders the normalization process of the Catalan language in many fields. One of them is education. The Catalan government has just lodged an appeal to the Constitutional Court against a decree issued by the Spanish Ministry of Education, which doubles the amount of hours dedicated to the Spanish language and literature at primary schools.

The Catalan government argues that this measure is a clear obstacle for the Catalan language immersion program at schools. It is unconstitutional, because it overlaps with the powers devolved to the Catalan Autonomous Community.

Another field in which Catalan is being discriminated is the judiciary. The most important bar associations in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands have delivered a report to the Council of Europe denouncing that the Spanish state does not comply with the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The main shortcomings are that judges, attorneys and civil servants are not required to know Catalan, thereby treating it as a foreign language. The right to use Catalan in court is restricted and there are no official Catalan translations of Spanish, EU and international legislation adopted or ratified before 1998 (thus unfulfilling Article 9.3 of the Charter).

Source: Mercator News, October 2003, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm 

Top of page

Updated (May 2004)

ASTURIAN NOT ALLOWED IN THE 2004 ELECTIONS

The fact that the Asturian language does not have an official status in the country has caused a problem in the electoral process and set off a case of linguistic discrimination.

The conflict has started when Andecha Astur, one of the parties which stood in the Spain's March 14, 2004 General Elections, had submitted its ballots to the Asturian Province Electoral Board but this body decided to ban them because they were in Asturian. The party contested the results.

The Electoral Board argued that as the Asturian language does not have the official status, the ballots in the Principality of Asturias may only be written in the official language, Castilian, without any prejudice to the Act 1/1998 on the promotion of Bable-Asturian.

However, Andecha Astur has claimed that this decision infringes the Law 1/1998, since this law entitles the Asturian citizens “to use Asturian and express themselves in it, orally and in writing”.

Moreover, the Electoral Board's attitude is in contrast to a decision issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court on February 24, 2000, which stated that “the use of a language different than Castilian must not obstruct participation in the electoral process” and “the unquestionable right to participate in the elections must be respected regardless of the language being used”.

Furthermore, as regards the official status of Asturian, the Constitutional Court has recently ruled out the proposal from August 1997 to make Asturian the official language in the municipality of Llengréu, thereby upholding a decision of the Asturian Higher Court of Justice.

Source: Mercator News, March 2004, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm

Top of page

Updated (July 2004)

A REPORT ON LANGUAGE RIGHTS IN EUSKAL HERRIA

Behatokia, the Basque Language Observatory for Linguistic Rights, has presented its 2003 annual report on the situation of language rights in Euskal Herria¹. Its conclusions, however, are not very encouraging as they confirm those drawn in Behatokia's two previous reports.

In general terms, the present report, which is based on an analysis of 737 cases, underlines that language rights are systematically infringed in the three administrative divisions in which Basque is spoken: the Basque Autonomous Community, the Autonomous Community of Navarre, and the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques in France.

Behatokia claims that in the great majority of cases the government administration does not comply with the legislation in force and that infringements take place at all levels of public administration.

In particular, the report draws attention to the cases of Navarre and France. Navarre is considered to be “a counter-model of Europe”, because its government has set out a reduction of legally recognized linguistic rights instead of extending them. France does not recognize legal rights for the Basque-speaking community and it has neither signed nor ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

According to Behatokia, speakers themselves worsen this situation because they perceive their right to use their language in all spheres of life as inferior and legally subordinate. In order to reverse this trend, Behatokia proposed to establish a specific judicial-administrative mechanism to guarantee language rights and official status for the language in all Basque territories.

Source: Mercator News, July 2004, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm

¹ the Basque-speaking areas (literally, the country of Euskara)

Top of page

Updated (September 2004)

THE CATALAN GOVERNMENT FINES THE SPANISH POST FOR USING ONLY SPANISH

The Department of Trade, Tourism and Consumption of the Catalan government imposed a sanction of 30,000 Euros against the Spanish Post for not having complied with the 1998 Catalan Act on Language Policy. Such an amount should serve as an example to prevent other public and private companies from not observing the law.

The Spanish Post did not observe several Articles of the Act (15, 30, 31 or 32). For instance, Article 32 establishes that "permanent signs and posters with general information and documents offering services provided to users and consumers in establishments open to the public shall be at least drawn up in Catalan".

Over seventy Catalan citizens complained about the post offices across the country, denouncing the lack of signage and documents written, at least, in Catalan, as set in the law. The complaints also referred to the substitution of a previous bilingual company sign for a current logo written only in Spanish. Nevertheless, the current trademark of the Spanish Post (Correos) cannot be penalized since the regulation is not applicable to trademarks, commercial names or to signs protected by industrial property legislation. In spite of this, the Spanish Parliament passed a green paper urging the government to adopt measures regarding this trademark, as it does not reflect multilingualism existing in Spain.

Since 2003 over 400 language complaints affecting several companies have been submitted to the Catalan administration. Most of these come from citizens and organizations working on the promotion of linguistic rights and 90 percent refer to the scarce presence of the Catalan language in signage, labelling, advertising and general documents offered to the public.

Source: Mercator News, September 2004, http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/index-gb.htm

Top of page

Updated (October 2004)

"NO" TO THE CONSTITUTION UNLESS CATALAN WILL HAVE AN EU OFFICIAL STATUS

"Until Catalan has an official EU language status, Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) will not support a constitutional referendum planned for next year", said Jordi Pujol, the leader of the party¹. He stated that if negative voting on the referendum was considered to be a rejection of "Europeanness", then a "yes" would be anti-Catalan.

Pujol's statement follows the September heated debate about the status of Catalan in Europe².

According to the Final Act of the EU Inter-Governmental Conference of June 17-18, 2004, governments are obliged to pay special attention to the languages which enjoy an official status in all or part of their territory (of Member States) in order to contribute to fulfilling the objective of respecting the Union's rich cultural and linguistic diversity. Such a move, if fulfilled, would open the door for other languages, which have an official status within the member states to gain a EU official status.

Another issue discussed in September was a linguistic definition of the Valencian dialect of Catalan as "Valencian" or "Valencian Catalan". As regards this, a political storm has broken out among the Spanish, Catalan and Valencian party leaders, even in the two parties (the PP and PSOE), which have traditionally promoted a language policy aimed at dividing the language. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that the reason for this discrepancy is strictly legal, since he keeps to the name mentioned in the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, while a representative from the PSOE later added in the Congress that Catalan and Valencian are scientifically the same language.

In contrast, the Spanish government has no problem to use different names when referring to Spanish in two basic legal texts³.

The Barcelona based NGO, "Mercator Legislation", points out that the Spanish Constitutional Court has already reached a verdict on the language unity issue in 1997, when it concluded that "Valencian may also be referred to as Catalan". The same verdict has been given by the Valencian Higher Court of Justice in four different decisions.

In an effort to find an answer to this political controversy, two days after his announcement the Minister promised to solve the conflict and pointed out that one possibility is to refer to the language as "Catalan-Valencian".

In addition, a recent case of language based discrimination and intimidation raises questions about progress of the language rights within the Autonomous Community itself. Mr. Esteve Comes was intimidated both by restaurant staff and the police when he used Catalan in Terrassa (a town 30 km north of Barcelona). The Catalan academic, Miquel Strubell, said that this case reveals the difficulties of Catalan speakers to use their language freely in Catalonia.

If Catalan attains an unquestioned status at all levels, including the police, the courts and central Spanish and European institutions, it will survive more easily and the Catalans will be able to cope with the country's new population that moves into this area.

In 2001, for the first time since the end of the Franco regime, the proportion of fluent Catalan speakers in Catalonia declined. It is estimated that by 2006⁴ there will have been a serious drop in the number of Catalan-speaking population.

Source: Eurolang News, Brussels, October 5, 2004, by Davyth Hicks and James Fife, http://www.eurolang.net/news.asp?id=4772

¹ Other major parties in Spain are planning to support the referendum.

² The Spanish government has already taken certain measures to ensure a EU official status for Catalan, Basque and Galician and the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, in a letter to the EU expressed the government's wish to recognize Basque, Galician, Catalan and Valencian as official EU languages.

³ "Castilian" in the Spanish Constitution and "Spanish" in the European Constitutional Treaty.

⁴ The population will surpass 70 million.

Top of page

Updated (February 2005)

FIRED FOR SPEAKING CATALAN

In December 2004, the security service company, "Prosegur", fired a receptionist for replying to a customer in Catalan.

In accordance with the linguistic legal framework established in Catalonia through the Act on Linguistic Policy, of January 7, 1998, "Catalan and Castilian, as official languages, may be used by citizens in all private and public activities without exception. Legal procedures carried out in either of the two official languages have, as far as the language used is concerned, full validity and effect."

Similarly, as stated in Article 3 of the Statute of Autonomy, "Catalan is Catalonia's own language".

The Catalan organization "Plataforma per la Llengua" has taken up the case and will start a campaign to denounce it as an example of linguistic discrimination.

Source: Eurolang News, Barcelona, January 14, 2005, by Alexia Bos Solé, http://www.eurolang.net/news.asp?id=4873

Top of page

Updated (April 2005)

TEMPORARY TEACHERS IN EUSKADI PROTEST AGAINST THE REQUIREMENT TO LEARN BASQUE 

Temporary primary and secondary school teachers in the Basque Autonomous Community have been told recently that they must obtain a certificate in Euskara before August 2005, otherwise they will lose their work contracts. The Basque Department of Education explained that this step materializes implementation of the language policy and meets the growing demand for Basque in education. 

A group of teachers who have not obtained the certificate yet criticizes such a measure and they would like to keep their jobs without passing "Irale". Around 60 high school teachers from Bilbo (Bilbao), who claimed to speak on behalf of 157 temporary teachers, shut in a school building and thus they protested against their linguistic discrimination. 

According to the Department of Education, these teachers have had many possibilities to learn Basque. Furthermore, in order to prepare for the Basque exam, teachers continued to be paid, without working, so they could concentrate only on studying Basque. Some of the 157 protesting teachers currently enjoy this situation. In addition, in case they will pass the exam later than in August, their work contract will be extended. 

The school system in the Basque Autonomy offers three linguistic options: 

• Basque medium with Spanish as the only subject taught in Spanish

• Spanish-medium with Basque

• bilingual 

Although after the dictatorship, at the beginning of the Basque Autonomy, the most popular was the Spanish monolingual option, at present it is Basque (only one out of ten pupils under ten chooses the Spanish monolingual option). 

In 2002, the Basque government signed an agreement with the nationalist unions (representing 63 percent of teachers) to improve the command of Basque amongst temporary schoolteachers under guaranteed contracts. This agreement required them to obtain the Irale PL2 or PL1 level; otherwise those with the required level of Basque will replace them. 

Source: Eurolang News, Cangas, April 13, 2005, by Alexandre Giráldez, http://www.eurolang.net/news.asp?id=4992

Top of page

Updated (October 2005)

NAVARRE GOVERNMENT IGNORES RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE ON BASQUE 

On September 22, 2005 the Committee of Experts working on the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages issued a report on Spain's compliance with the Charter. Out of 177 pages of the report 40 refer to Navarre and highlight the division of the province into linguistic areas, the policy against the Basque-speaking media and the shortcomings in state administration. The experts claim that the Navarre Government fails to fulfill 42 of 57 commitments made by the signatories of the Charter. 

Navarre has been divided into three linguistic zones: a so-called Basque-speaking zone (northwest), a non Basque-speaking zone (south) and a mixed zone. The law gives a different level of acknowledgment and protection to the speakers depending on the zone. 

The Council of Europe asked the Navarre Government to reflect on the need to give equal protection to Basque (Euskara) in the mixed and Basque-speaking zone because up to 5.7 percent of the population in the mixed zone is bilingual, 13 percent can speak some Basque and 30 percent of children study at model D schools, where all subjects are taught in Basque, except Spanish and English. 

However, the President of the Navarre Government, Miguel Sanz, messaged to Strasbourg that they would follow the same path. According to the Linguistic Policy Director for Navarre, Mr Pegenaute, the Law on the Basque language says that the language is co-official only in the Basque-speaking zone. 

The language is unofficial in the south, although an increasing number of children attend Basque-medium schools. The government of Iruña (Pamplona) restricts increasingly the use of the language in the mixed zone (for example, over the last few years existing bilingual road signs have been substituted by monolingual Spanish ones all over the Iruñea area). Euskalerria Irratia, the only Basque-language radio in Iruña has been repeatedly denied grants or even a license. The station has been broadcasting for 18 years (since 1988). Radios with an audience of 2,000 have been granted licenses by the government, while Euskalerria Irratia is broadcasting "illegally" to 8,000 Basque-speakers in the city. 

Source: Eurolang News, Iruñea/Pamplona, September 27, 2005, by Edu Lartzanguren, http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2458&Itemid=1&lang=en

Top of page

Updated (April 2006)

BASQUE, CATALAN AND GALICIAN LANGUAGE NGOs JOIN FORCES 

Behatokia (the Basque language NGO), the Observatori de la Llengua Catalana (the Catalan NGO) and a new Galician linguistic observatory set up by A Mesa Pola Normalizacion Linguistica, have joined forces in their work to promote their respective languages. 

One of their first joint actions was a meeting held in mid-March 2006 with Spanish MPs where the organizations discussed recommendations published by the Council of Europe regarding the commitments undertaken by the Spanish state on ratification of the European Charter on Regional or Minority Languages and its Committee of Experts' report. 

Speaking to the press, they noted that both the report and the recommendations of the Council of Ministers clearly indicate the Spanish state's failure to fulfill its commitments. 

Carlos Callón, the president of the Galician NGO, observed that their Parliament requires only one third of the school system to be in the Galician language. However, it has not yet been applied and the legal requirement is not even complied within first grade although the Council of Europe has asked the competent authorities to fully implement Galician language education. Mr. Callón said that this blatant infringement of the language rights in the region is intolerable. 

Regarding the Basque language situation, Paul Bilbao (the director of Behatokia) spoke about language rights in Euskal Herria and drew attention to the "abnormal situation" in Nafarroa. He argued that the administrative division of Nafarroa into Basque-speaking, non-Basque speaking, and mixed regions with different language privileges, does not make sense at all. He added that this issue has been also raised by the two European Council Committees; they stated that it is difficult to understand why Basque does not have official status in areas where its speakers form the majority. Furthermore, Mr. Bilbao insisted that there ought to be more employees who can speak Basque in Spain's general administrative system. He pointed out that out of thirteen commitments made concerning the justice system, the administration has fulfilled only two. 

Finally, Josep Romeu, the coordinator of the Observatori de la Llengua Catalana, said that the Committee of Experts expressed its admiration for Catalonian educational system based on language immersion and non-segregation of pupils. Nevertheless, he indicated that the school systems in Valencia and the Balearic Islands fail to comply with the minimum recommendations of the European Charter. He also presented the opinion of the Committee of Experts, which stated that Spain fails to follow the EU Charter by not honoring its citizens to use Catalan in the courts. The Committee recommended that Spain should revise the Organic Law of the Judiciary and reconsider language profile requirements for court employees. 

Following the press conference, the representatives of the three organizations and the Dean of the Faculty of Legal Sciences of Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Santi Castellà, met with representatives of parliamentary groups to discuss ways to get the state to fulfill its commitments. 

The Spanish state is due to present a second report to the Council of Europe in November 2006. 

Source: Eurolang News, April 12, 2006 by Davyth Hicks http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2587&Itemid=1&lang=en

Top of page

Updated (May 2008)

GALICIAN SPEAKERS PROTEST AGAINST OBSTACLES THEY HAVE TO FACE

An organization ‘Mesa pola Normalización Lingü