Embassies against 25% Spanish in a training center in Montcada i Reixac. Gianluca Battista
The Supreme Court of Catalonia (TSJC) has decided to allow the use of 25% Spanish in two classrooms of three Catalan schools as an “extraordinary and minor” case. The court recognizes that the new Generalitat laws on the use of language in schools (Legislative Decree 6/22 and Law 8/22), adopted last year, constitute an “interference” in the granting of more Spanish lessons in the centers , but stresses that he believes these arrangements are “unconstitutional” and has decided to confirm the 25% that three families had been granted as a precautionary measure. However, the Constitutional Court has not yet ruled on these state laws.
Education Minister Anna Simó criticized the TSJC on Tuesday. “The court has no educational functions and should not interfere in these issues,” explained Simó, who also accused the judges of the Catalan Superior of “waging a campaign” for the publication of a preview last week and this Tuesday of the resolutions, in full election campaign from 23-J. Simó, who has announced that he will appeal to the Supreme Court, has clarified that the sentences concern only two students, as one has already completed the school phase.
In an unusual act, the court pushed ahead with the decision from these three centers last week, but had not fully released the decision as of Tuesday. So far, the controversial court had refused to grant new measures related to increasing the presence of Spanish in classrooms, given the new Catalan regulations that have come into force, which stipulate that percentages cannot be set when using languages and that their presence in schools must be modulated according to the profile of each center, with the only condition that at the end of compulsory education all pupils have a sufficient knowledge of the two official languages.
The TSJC considers this new regulation “unconstitutional” because it violates numerous previous sentences and because it “blocks” the application of the sentence that establishes the obligation to teach at least 25% of core subjects in Spanish throughout the education system It should have been in April intended to come into force last year, but has never come into force. For this reason, a year ago the Catalan Supreme Court itself asked the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of these regional laws, a decision that has not yet been made. However, he admits that in this case the new Catalan regulations “apply”.
The TSJC believes that, given its “extraordinary and minor nature”, it should not wait for this constitutional declaration to confirm the precautions granted so far to three families who had requested 25% of Spanish classes for their children. these three cases. . “This appeal does not deal with the general situation of the Catalan education system, but rather with the specific situation of the applicant’s son,” the judges claim, so that “although it is a general judicial intervention, it relates to the education system as a whole.” None to arouse the emerging constitutional doubts, the situation is not the same when it comes to dealing with the specific case of a particular student.”
In all three cases, the judges recognize the right of family members “that their child receives effective and balanced instruction in Spanish at the school and course in which he/she continues his/her education”, which translates to “to minus another”. means non-language curriculum area, subject or subject” taught in Spanish. On the other hand, the court does not accept the family’s request for the cancellation of the language project, since it is a document that affects all students, nor the change in the label of the center, since the schools have autonomy in this regard.
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In these three resolutions, the TSJC goes one step further and ensures, in terms of educational policy, that the Catalan language immersion model could be viable “in an education with free binary or language options” (like that of the Basque Country), but as it does is now the case, has “limits” when it comes to achieving a balance between respecting “the co-official status of languages and the right of students to a minimum level of education in Spanish, at constitutional and legal levels” .
Last week, the TSJC confirmed it had considered five schools’ cases. In three of them, the court confirmed 25% knowledge of Spanish, but in the remaining two the process was temporarily suspended pending documentation.
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