"El puto C1 de catalán": a nurse was filed for underestimating on TikTok the linguistic requirements of the oppositions in Catalonia

“My mother is going to take the C1 of Catalan”.

From a counter at the Vall d'Hebron hospital, in Barcelona, ​​Begoña Suárez, a nurse at the center, belittles through a video posted on TikTok that the C1 level of Catalan is a requirement to appear for the oppositions in Catalonia.

"A union has explained to us that they open 3,500 jobs in Catalonia, but that a requirement is the fucking C1 of Catalan", she despises her in the video, which has gone viral on the networks.

A Vall d'Hebron spokesman announced this Thursday that the hospital "cannot tolerate" these actions that "do not represent the institution or the center", and that it will open a file on the worker.

The Minister of Health of the Generalitat, Manel Balcells, assures that "they will get to the end of the matter."

Begoña Suárez begins her recording with two other colleagues inside the hospital, all without the mandatory mask.

“I am from Cádiz, and they are from Granada and San Sebastián”, she specifies.

She points out that they are working in Barcelona and that a union has informed them about what they need to get a place in the public system.

"They tell us that they are taking 3,500 places and that this will be our year, but to get the fucking opposition we have to get the fucking C1 [level] of Catalan."

Just at this moment, one of her classmates, Clara, says that she has signed up to study Catalan, to which Begoña Suárez blurts out: “Have you signed up?

Clara, you're dismantling my video, auntie”.

The nurse insists.

"My mother is going to take the C1 of Catalan, because I don't."

When Clara starts to speak Catalan with a fourth person who doesn't appear in the video,

The video of the nurse, who has made her TikTok and Instagram accounts private, has outraged the counselor Balcells.

Through Twitter, the health officer has assured that the statements are "intolerable in a public servant."

“We opened a file.

The health system has to guarantee care in the language of Catalonia”.

Balcells claims in a thread to value professionals who "come from where they come" are "interested in speaking Catalan" and stresses that knowing the language is "key to patient safety".

Of the 1,640 nurses who registered in Barcelona in 2022, 297 (18%) came from outside Catalonia, according to data from the Barcelona Official College of Nurses (COIB).

The hiring system in Catalonia is different from that of other communities.

"The Catalan Health Institute (ICS) can offer a substitute contract without taking into account the merits in the stock market, while the Andalusian Health System (SAS) goes in strict order in the stock market," explains Isabel Quintana, head of Collegiate care of the COIB.

This differential factor means that newly registered nurses in Andalusia, for example, have more opportunities to be hired in the ICS than in the SAS, and can work in ICS reference hospitals such as Vall d'Hebron or Bellvitge.

"The experience they can obtain in any of the ICS hospitals later gives them points for the SAS job bank," Quintana remarks.

The Vall d'Hebron hospital has also shown its rejection, through a spokesperson.

"We cannot tolerate that within our facilities, during working hours and with the uniform of the institution, videos are made that have nothing to do with healthcare activity."

You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on