MERCATOR :: News

September 2004

SPAIN “WISHES” TO MAKE BASQUE, GALICIAN AND CATALAN, BUT ALSO VALENCIAN, EU OFFICIAL LANGUAGES (Avui)

September 2004 – The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, announced in a press conference that he sent a letter on 13 September to the EU, in which he expressed the Spanish Government’s “desire” that Basque, Galician, Catalan and Valencian be recognised as EU official languages. Nonetheless, he immediately underlined that this is just a possibility and that the Executive “has not formalized a proposal yet”. In the letter, Mr. Moratinos also asked the President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, to suggest him different ways to comply with the commitment expressed in the Final Act of the EU’s Inter-Governmental Conference of 17-18 June: to pay “special attention” to the languages which enjoy official status in all or part of the territory of Member States in order to contribute to fulfilling the objective of respecting the Union's rich cultural and linguistic diversity (see Mercator-Legislation’s News: June 2004). As regards the Catalan/Valencian issue, Moratinos’ announcement provoked a political storm among Spanish, Catalan and Valencian party leaders, with division of opinions even within PP and PSOE, the two parties which have traditionally promoted language policies aiming at dividing the language. Moratinos stated that the reason for their differentiation is strictly legal, as he said he just abides to the name mentioned in the Valencian Statute of Autonomy, while a high representative of his own party (PSOE) in the Congreso later added that Catalan and Valencian are “scientifically” the same language. By contrast, the Spanish Government has no problem to use different names when referring to Spanish in two basic legal texts: Castilian (as stated in the Spanish Constitution) and Spanish (as stated in the European constitutional treaty). It should also be pointed out that the Spanish Constitutional Court already solved the language unity issue in 1997, when it concluded that “Valencian (...) may also be referred to as ‘Catalan’”. The same conclusion has been also recently reached by the Valencian Higher Court of Justice in four different decisions (see Mercator-Legislation’s News: August 2004). In an effort to find a solution to the political controversy, two days after his announcement the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated his commitment to solve the conflict and pointed out that one possible solution would be to refer to the language as Catalan/Valencian.