Yet another obvious political and linguistic attack from Spain to Catalonia

Spanish Minister of Education, José Ignacio Wert, has different standards when judging Catalan or Spanish. And if he can harm Catalan economy in the process, what’s not to love?

It’s not the first time that I’ve mentioned the attacks to linguistic immersion at school, a model that ensures the proper preservation of Catalan and which has been validated and praised by Europe. I’ve also told how the Spanish government insists on destroying this model.

No matter that Catalan students get better marks in Spanish than in Catalan in their A levels (see table), some parents fear that their children can’t study in their language and might lose it—fear that minister Wert shares.

A levels marks of Catalan students for both languages

	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Catalan	6.30	5.58	5.52	6.15	5.75	6.20	5.99
Spanish	5.62	6.31	6.25	6.55	6.62	6.34	6.43

Minister Wert laughing at (not with) his Catalan counterpart [photo]

Bear in mind that in the course 2010-11 up to 235 students in Barcelona requested lessons in Spanish. That went down to 48 in 2011-12, 18 in 2012-13 and this last year they were only 7 out of 230,000 students. At Catalonia level, in September 2012 there were 12 out of 50.000 families interested.

That same year in Valencia, in the opposite situation, almost 126.000 kids couldn’t study in Catalan only in primary school (Catalan or Valencian, which are the same, no matter what some say).

Even so, minister Wert’s tried before to push Catalan into the background as an optional subject unnecessary to graduate from secondary school. Needless to say that Catalonia ignores this kind of political schemes, I mean… measures.

But now mister Wert—deliberately ignoring the situation in Valencia—decides to grant the exorbitant sum of 6,000 euros per year to students who attend private schools to study in Spanish in Catalonia. Now that´s a clear attack to Catalan language and economy buying off families in the midst of an economic crisis and cutbacks.

It is sad that our country suffocates in so natural a way our language while 161 universities around the world teach Catalan (5 in Asia, 1 in Australia, 28 in North America, 11 in South America and 116 in 21 European countries). Or is it our country?