Pointless battle over language immersion

The ruling of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia that urges the Generalitat (Catalan regional government) to revise its model of linguistic immersion in the schools, in line with a Spanish Supreme Court decision, is setting off an undesirable political war. Only a few days from September 11 (the Catalan national day) and two months from the November 20 general elections, this issue offers a store of high-powered rhetorical ammunition to Catalonia's political groups: the Popular Party (PP) and Ciutadans, on the one hand, and the rest of the Catalan parties on the other. Here we have a battle that does no good for a society which, for almost 30 years, has lived in harmony with a model of linguistic immersion teaching that is widely accepted, though with some difficulties in satisfying a minority of citizens who wish their children to be taught in Castilian.

Linguistic immersion derives from the Normalization Law of 1983, unanimously passed by the Catalan parliament. The Supreme Court gave the green light to this law in 1988; the Constitutional Court endorsed it in 1994. But in 2010 the ruling on the new Catalan statute explicitly introduced a nuance that until then had only been taken for granted: the character of Castilian as a vehicular language of teaching as well, though without questioning the central place that the law and the courts attributed to Catalan as a vehicular language in the region's school system. In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court admitted the lawsuit of a family demanding schooling in Castilian for their children; but, for the first time, linked this subjective right to the use of Castilian as a vehicular language, as well as Catalan. This explicit recognition lies behind the stir created by the Supreme Court ruling, which the Catalan court has ordered the Generalitat to implement within two months.

Unlike other regions that have several school systems differentiated because of language, Catalonia, which by the end of the Franco regime was flooded with immigrants from the rest of Spain, opted for a single system, so no one would feel discriminated against on account of their place of birth.

Time has shown the wisdom of this model, to which all the Catalan parliamentary parties have gradually assented. The PISA report and other expert studies show that Catalan pupils, at the end of their obligatory schooling, have a proficiency in Castilian equal to pupils in other, monolingual regions.

The Generalitat has announced an appeal against the ruling, but meanwhile it must implement it in the terms that it considers to be consonant with the Supreme Court ruling.

To reinforce, in some measure, the teaching of Castilian does not call into question the model of linguistic immersion that has existed for 30 years; nor does the Supreme Court question it. In certain Catalan educational areas and sectors this is already being done by means of intelligent application of the law. And it is what the Catalan government must do in any case.