Spain fury as Catalonia plans to officially downgrade Spanish language in regional schools

Education reform removing Spanish from being a mother tongue divide teachers into two

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A proposal to downgrade Spanish in Catalan schools has been described as “linguistic genocide” by traditionalists, who accuse the country’s Left-wing government of selling out the language of Cervantes to appease Catalan separatists.

Although the proposed education reform, which is being debated in Spain’s parliament, has seen the country’s fractious political scene cut down the middle once more, despite Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s appeals for unity.

Regions such as the Basque Country and Catalonia already deliver education largely in their local languages, the proposal is to erase a clause that enshrines Spanish as the “vehicular language”.

The Socialist party of Mr Sánchez and hard-Left coalition partner Podemos came under heavy fire over the education reform on Thursday in Congress, where the government lacks a stable parliamentary majority and is forced to rely on Basque and Catalan nationalist parties.

Speaking for the main opposition Popular Party (PP), Sandra Moneo said the reform, which also limits the freedom to operate of so-called ‘concerted’ schools, privately run with public funds, “breaks [Spain’s] system of liberties and the constitutional consensus”.

The education reform prepared by the minority left coalition government, which was accepted in the parliament with the support of the separatist political parties in Catalonia

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The PP has said it will use all legal means to avoid applying the new law in the regions where it governs, while Spain’s liberal Ciudadanos party has said it will not support Mr Sánchez’s crucial 2021 Covid reconstruction budget in protest at the “Stalinist” education reform.

Jon Juaristi, one of five former directors of the Cervantes Institute, a public agency that promotes Spanish language and culture, who spoke to the newspaper El Mundo about their opposition to the reform, said it was “linguistic genocide” to “destroy Spaniards’ language and replace it with one that has no international projection”, such as Catalan.

The government defended Spain’s eighth education reform in little over four decades of democracy by pointing out the stated objective that all students must achieve proficiency in Spanish. “This is not the elimination of Spanish; it is perfectly safeguarded,” said Education Minister Isabel Celaá.

Spain’s courts have told Catalonia’s education department that 25 per cent of classes must be taught in Spanish, but pro-Spanish groups say that this is largely ignored.