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.
