The Supreme Court recalls that Spanish must be the teaching language in Catalonia although the regional law does not say so

Entrance of the Turó del Drac school in Canet de Mar (Barcelona), forced to give more teaching hours in Spanish in a classroom as a precautionary measure by the TSJC after the request of a family. EL PAÍS

The Supreme Court has once again placed on record its position on the debate on the use of Spanish in Catalan schools.

Castilian is the vehicular language of education throughout the State and the co-official languages ​​are also in the respective autonomous communities, in accordance with their Statutes and applicable regulations”, states the Contentious-Administrative Chamber in a ruling in which pronounces on the scope of the omission of Spanish as a vehicular language (for teaching use) in a decree of June 2015 of the Department of Education of the Generalitat.

The ruling confirms the ruling issued in 2019 by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which rejected the appeal filed by the State Attorney against the Catalan standard.

The legal representative of the State considered that the decree only regulated Catalan as a vehicular language and left out Spanish, but the Supreme Court, as the regional judges already did, recalls that the omission of Spanish in that norm does not mean its exclusion as a vehicular language, since this is shielded in the Constitution.

The legal conflict over the language immersion system in Catalan educational centers remains open after the TSJC declared firm last January the ruling that requires teaching at least 25% of Spanish in Catalan classrooms.

For years there has been a trickle of sentences that require applying that minimum of 25% of Spanish in teaching, but until now they only affected the student who denounced it.

What is relevant about the ruling declared final in January is that, for the first time, the measure was extended to the entire system.

The Generalitat, however, is reluctant to apply it and one of its political arguments is that the Catalan Education Law only contemplates Catalan as the vehicular language.

That argument is the one that -without referring directly to that 25% resolution- the Supreme Court now replies, in a sentence, advanced by

which responds to the appeal filed by the State Attorney's Office on a 2015 decree that is based on the regional law.

The Catalan norm does not mention Spanish as the vehicular language of its teaching and, according to the legal representative of the State, this “regulatory silence” entails “a lack of protection of Spanish as the vehicular language in education”.

The Supreme, however, recalls that the ruling of the Constitutional Court on the Statute, in 2010, already established that Spanish was the vehicular language, for which the magistrates of the Contentious Chamber point out that the omission of this fact in the rule Catalan has no practical effect.

"The omission of reference to Spanish does not mean, therefore, its exclusion as a vehicular language, as indicated by the Constitutional Court, since this would be manifestly unconstitutional", warn the judges, who recall that, in addition, this omission is from the Catalan Law of Education,

The Generalitat itself admitted this situation in the allegations presented to the Supreme Court in response to the Lawyer's appeal.

Although politically the Government continues to defend the primacy of Catalan over Spanish in education, its legal representatives affirm before the high court that the position of Spanish as an “equally vehicular” language is safeguarded.