CATALONIA -- People's Party concerted effort against Catalan in Balearic Islands - VilaWeb

People's Party concerted effort against Catalan in Balearic Islands - VilaWeb

 The media, public administration, and education are the three pillars
that sustain a community. If one of the three legs falters, the society
trembles.

After his investiture, the president of the Balearic
Islands, José Ramón Bauzá (Madrid, 1970) made it crystal clear: 'Spanish
is our language and Catalan is a co-official language.' And from the
Autonomous Community elections of May 22, 2011 to the present, the
linguistic policy of the Balearic Government in hands of the People's
Party, which only received support from 26.8% of the eligible voters
(194,680 votes out of 726,265 registered voters), has done all it can to
take the three-legged foundation apart.

Let's look at it in broad strokes:

With respect to the media:

• Closing Mallorcan Radio and Television. 

• Eliminating ability to have Catalan as an option in the TDT multiplex. 

• Broadcasting movies on IB3 Television exclusively in Spanish

• Not allowing coverage of topics related to the Catalan language or
that aren't positive about the Balearic Government on IB3 TV and Radio.
This censure on the part of the management has been denounced by the
Union of Journalists of the Balearic Islands.

With respect to the public administration:

• The knowledge of Catalan will not be generally required in order to
apply for public-sector jobs with the Balearic Islands public
administration, or to accept such jobs (according to the 12th additional
disposition of Law 9/2012, of July 19, which is a modification of Law
3/2007, of March 27, on public civil service in the autonomous community
of the Balearic Islands).

With respect to education:

• Eliminating language education support teams from the Education
Services in Catalan department of the Education Council in Menorca,
Ibiza and Formentera, and reducing them by one third in Mallorca.

• Suspending Catalan teacher's education classes that form part of Formation and Reeducation Plan

• Ignoring schools' linguistic plans

• Expressing scorn for the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB)
the official institution that should be consulted for all Catalan
language related issues

• Balearic Government initiative to segregate children by education
language (Resolution of the Minister of Education, Culture and
Universities of May 28, 2012; it should be noted that as the 2012-13
school year opened, only 13% of parents and guardians had chosen Spanish
as the vehicular language for new students in the Balearic Islands). 

• Implementing, during the 2013-2014 school year of the 'Integrated
Language Treatment system (TIL) in all non-university education centers
of the Balearics, that is, the unilateral application of trilingualism
in the school system

• It has been said that Decree 15/2013, from April 19, with which the
Integrated Language Treatment system is implemented in the
non-university education centers in the Balearic Islands represents the
end of the language model in the Balearic Island schools that had been
used over the last 30 years. While the Balearic Government has defended
this initiative as a first step toward education in three languages, the
educational community and parliamentary opposition have accused the
Government of going too far too quickly given the scarce educational
rigor evident in its implementation and the lack of resources, and see
it as an attempts to marginalize the Catalan language, which is native
to the Balearic Islands, given that the presence of Catalan in the
classroom is reduced by 2/3. According to a declaration by the
professors of the Educational School of the University of the Balearic
Islands on October 8, 2013, 'the forced vehicular use of the Spanish
language in a third of the subjects taught is obviously not intended to
improve the knowledge of English or any other foreign language, but
rather, to simply diminish the presence of Catalan.

With respect to the unity of the Catalan language:

• Abandoning the Institut Ramon Llull

• Using the phrase "co-official language that is different from
Spanish" in order to refer to the Catalan language in official
publications.

• Refusal of the PP to recognize the unity of the Catalan language in the Franja de Aragó.

• Illegalizing the display of teachers' protest symbols that use the
four-barred flag or bow in elementary and high schools (Law 9/2013, of
December 23, on the use of institutional symbols in the Balearic
Islands)

We should add, in addition:

• Not holding a meeting of the Social Council of the Catalan Language

• Eliminating grants and aid to cultural activities, like Catalan
Book Week, the Book Fair, the Manacor Fair and the Mallorca Space

• Closing the Mallorca Space in Barcelona and the Illa de Llibres a
Palma due to the lack of support from the Council of Mallorca, the
Balearic Government and the Institute of Balearic Studies

• Substituting the name of Palma with the false 'Palma de Mallorca'
(Law 6/2012, of June 6, a modification of Law 23/2006, of December 20,
on Palma de Mallorca being the capital city) which is unacceptable and
contrary to the traditional toponomy in the Catalan language according
to the Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics of the
University of the Balearic Islands

• Allowing the possilibity that the placenames in the Balearics have
both official Spanish and Catalan versions (first final disposition of
Law 9/2012, of July 19, of modification of Law 3/2007, of March 27, of
public civil service of the autonomous community of the Balearic
Islands), and the change of the official name of the city and
municipality of Maó which becomes Maó-Mahón, against the opinion of the
Department of Catalan Philology and General Linguistics of the
University of the Balearic Islands.

• Last December 10, the Balearic Parliament declared that the
"Catalan Countries"—a well known term used to refer to the entire
historic, cultural, and linguistic area where Catalan is spoken—"don't
exist and that the Balearic Islands don't form part of any 'Catalan
Country'".

A recent editorial in Última Hora, a widely-read, leading newspaper
in the Balearics, summed up the offensive of the Government against the
Catalan language with these words: "President Bauzá intends to take his
attack on the Catalan language to the end, through laws, decrees, and
decree-laws, which began with the elimination of the requirement that
Catalan be a requisite for becoming a civil servant and which has
continued by blocking linguistic immersion in the schools. The open
support to those who defend his outlandish model of Catalan
standardization in the Balearics should not be overlooked. ("The useless
struggle of the Government against the bows", January 18, 2014)

Halfway through the 8th Legislature, it's clear that the Government
has taken advantage of its absolute majority obtained in the 2011
elections to the Balearic Parliament in order to restrict the Catalan
language in areas of official use, education, and the media, suppressing
the Balearic's own official language and breaking the harmony
agreements that were established with the Law of Linguistic
Normalization in the Balearic Islands, approved unanimously in 1986.

Antoni Nadal
Professor of Administrative Language

This article was originally published in the Journal of Language and Law blog
of the Public Administration School of Catalonia, Generalitat de
Catalunya. It is translated and published here with permission.