Spanish Courts Rule Against Catalan. Again.

The Spanish Supreme Court just ruled that Catalan be eliminated as the language to be used in schools in Catalonia. The ruling affects kids between the ages of 3 and 6—precisely when language learning is at its strongest.

Specifically, the Spanish Supreme Court is eliminating four articles of the 2008 Catalan Ministry of Education decree that regulates teaching preschool kids from 3 to 6 years old. This decree is the one that specifies that Catalan be used as the teaching medium in classrooms.

Among the points that are eliminated is the one that reads “Catalan, the language of Catalonia, shall be used as a language for teaching and learning activities, as well as in the internal and external educational community.“ In particular, it also regulates that foreign students be taught in Catalan so as to facilitate their rapid integration into Catalan society.

The ruling also makes reference to an appeal against a previous ruling by Catalonia's High Court concerning Catalan in schools, in which it ruled in favor of language immersion.

This is the third court ruling against Catalan in schools in recent months. On May 31st, Catalonia's High Court—a Spanish court despite its name—agreed to review a petition by four families who had requested that their kids be taught in Spanish. This was based on a March ruling by the same court granting the right to three other Spanish speaking families to have their kids be taught in Spanish only.

The linguistic model used in Catalan schools has been praised by the EU commission on multilingualism, and it gives Catalonia's educational model as an example of multilingualism, and a model to be emulated by other multilingual European countries.

In other news, and on the very same day, Catalonia's High Court ruled in favor of Partido Popular municipal leader Alberto Fernández Díaz in his appeal to stop Catalan from being the preferred language at the Barcelona city government, ​​as established by the local legislation.

Other Anti-Catalan Rulings