The
 results of the Spanish general election highlight how different 
Catalonia and the Basque country are from the rest of the country when 
it comes to political voting patterns. The Spanish Partido Popular (PP) 
won in all but 7 of Spain's 52 provinces: http://www.elmundo.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/.
 These seven include all four Catalan multi-seat constituencies, and two
 Basque ones. Convergència won in three of the four, and the socialists 
just manage to retain Barcelona. In the Basque country, now that the 
previously banned leftist independence movement (Amaiur) has been allowed to stand, 
it won 7 seats (to the Basque nationalist party's five), including one in Navarre: altogether, a remarkable 
feat.
The distribution of gains, municipality by municipality, is well shown here: http://www.elmundo.es/elecciones/elecciones-generales/resultados/mapa_cambio.html
They
 won on an economic ticket (basically, the governing Socialists lost on 
their own, for the PP got under 600,000 more votes than in 2008) but are
 widely believed to plan considerable recentralisation of services. This
 will have an indirect language impact, almost certainly, as there are 
very clear correlations between the increase of the use of Catalan (at 
least in Catalonia) and transfer of responsibility for services from 
central government to Catalonia over the years).
In terms of direct pressure, the People's party 214-page manifesto states the following, when speaking about schools:  
"Libertad
 de elección es también libertad de elegir la lengua vehicular, ya sea 
el castellano o cualquiera de las lenguas cooficiales. Estamos 
convencidos de que esta mayor libertad, además de atender un derecho 
fundamental, redundará en la calidad."
"Freeedom
 of choice is also freedom to choose the vehicular language [of 
schooling], whether it be Spanish or any of the other official 
languages. We are convinced that this greater freedom not only responds 
to a fundamental right, will also lead to geater quality". 
This
 is an undeclared war on Catalonia's unitary model, which has been 
praised not only for its high level of language attainment in both 
official languages, but also because is furthers social cohesion. Among 
other things, it is not central government that has the power to decide 
on such an issue. Furthermore, demand for initial infant schooling in 
Spanish, which is in the Catalan legislation, is met and the level of 
conflict inside Catalonia, over this issue, is virtually non-existent 
outside Spanish nationalist circles. Moreover, where the same party 
holds regional power and such a choice is offered on paper, it is 
non-Spanish speakers who are failing in very large numbers to receive 
schooling in their language despite having requested it: an estimated 
129,000 last year in the Valencian region alone. 
The Catalan 
government, with massive public support, is adamant in not being 
prepared to change the language-in-education model which has been in 
operation for several decades. and is under threat because of several 
highly controversial Spanish court judgments.