October 2005

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THE REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE EUROPEAN CHARTER FOR REGIONAL OR MINORITY LANGUAGES IN SPAIN HAS BEEN MADE PUBLIC

October 2005 - The Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe has declared that “Spain must be praised for the high recognition and degree of protection provided in principle to regional or minority languages”. However, the report on the application of the European Charter for regional or minority languages in Spain also considers that “there is still a need for awareness-raising in Spain” about this issue and “very little attention is devoted to linguistic diversity by the national Spanish media and there still seems to be a lack of awareness among the Castilian-speaking majority population [...] that Spain is a plurilingual country. More efforts therefore seem to be needed in education for the majority Castilian-speaking population and in the national media with a view to fostering a greater acceptance and respect by the majority vis–à-vis the specificities of regional identities as an integral part of the Spanish heritage”. Furthermore, it stresses that “there still exists a clear gap between some of the undertakings chosen and the level of protection offered by the domestic legal framework and/or practice”.

The report, issued on the 21st of September, points out that “a general problem affecting all languages covered under Part III is related to the field of justice” and the State administration in the autonomous communities concerned. The recommendations adopted by the Committee of Ministers observes that the Spanish state has not taken the necessary legal and practical measures needed to ensure that judicial and state administration staff have a working knowledge of the languages concerned. The languages covered under Part III are, according to the report, Galician, Basque, Catalan and Valencian. The segregation of Catalan and Valencian as two different languages has been a subject of controversy since the report states that “the Catalan language is also split in three different autonomous communities, ie Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Aragon”, leaving aside the Valencian Country which shares, according to the international academic world, the official Valencian Academy of Language and other university institutions, the same language with the former territories. The Committee of Ministers also recommends the Spanish authorities to strengthen the protection of the minoritised languages spoken in the autonomous community of Aragon, where a language law is yet to be adopted. These languages are Aragonese, covered under Part II of the Charter, and Catalan, which has made a remarkable progress in Catalonia but it was described to the Committee of Experts as being critical in Aragon.

As regards the field of education, the experts also suggested that a “full immersion” educational model should be made systematically available for Catalan in the Balearic Islands, as well for Valencian (sic) and Galician. It also identified some shortcomings in education in the Basque Country. The use of Basque in private radio and television broadcasting and in the autonomous administration of Navarre also poses some problems. Moreover, the experts advise to apply “an appropriate form of Part III protection to the Basque language within the mixed zone”, an area where the aim of promoting the language as established in the Foral Law on Basque cannot fully apply. Concerning the languages that are only covered by Part II of the Charter, the Asturian language is in a rather special situation given the social prestige that has been acquiring in recent years. The Committee encourages the autonomous authorities to not simply recognize its existence but to qualify it as co-official in the Principality of Asturias.

The Spanish state agrees that the authorities must introduce formulas to enable and foster the promotion of regional or minority languages, but believes that it cannot be overlooked “the fact that the effectiveness of the measures depends on voluntary acceptance by speakers”. Most of NGO promoting non-Castilian languages have replied to this comment by pointing out that the use of other territorial languages is not a matter of voluntarism but of right.