The defense of cultural and linguistic plurality is a sign of the identity of the pan-European federalism. And, for this reason, one of the foundations of the construction of the European Union. That defense of plurality is the result of the effort to overcome the tragedy to which nationalisms, mutated into totalitarianisms, led Europe in the middle of the last century.
The Spanish Constitution of 78 was agreed within this framework, social and political, of defense of diversity. With this same spirit, in Catalonia the Law of Linguistic Normalization In ’83 he enjoyed almost unanimous parliamentary (and social) support. Also for this reason the attempt to convert the Rosselló Porcel school in Santa Coloma de Gramenet into the first ‘Catalan school’ in the public network failed. So it was not clear what the name of the other schools was going to be: ‘non-Catalan school’? ‘Castilian school’? ‘Escola espanyola’? The project of creating a double net, differentiated according to the vehicular language in education, collapsed in the face of the majority will to build a single school network that would guarantee the knowledge of the two co-official languages of that time, Catalan and Spanish, to all children in Catalonia . Regardless of your place of birth or your sociolinguistic environment.
During the more than three decades that have elapsed since that central agreement of Catalan society, there have been various attempts to open a ‘war of tongues’ in Catalonia. The language, Catalan or Spanish, depending on the case, has been used as an instrument of political agitation by the various nationalisms. All nationalisms end up defending a monolingualism: that of ‘their’ language. They forget with this that languages belong to those of us who use them.
All politically active nationalisms in Spain flee from the defense of multilingualism. That is to say, of the defense of individual right to know and be able to use one’s own languages. This defense can only be understood by creating the appropriate conditions to know the different languages (as the linguistic immersion in Catalonia seeks) and to favor their use in a practical way (as the organic bill for the Recognition and Protection of Plurality pursued). Linguistics of Spain, presented in the Senate by the Grup de l’Entesa pel Progrés de Catalunya, in January 2013, and rejected by the PP, which had an absolute majority in the chamber). Since then, neither the ‘defenders of Catalan’ nor the ‘defenders of Spanish’ have made the slightest effort to seek consensual formulas that develop article 3.3 of the CE78. The one who reads: “The wealth of the various linguistic modalities of Spain is a cultural heritage that will be the object of special respect and protection & rdquor ;. It’s time to amend this abandonment.
Undoubtedly, neither the defenders of Catalan nor the defenders of Spanish remember that, since March 18, 2007, the UNESCO convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions is part of the EU legal bases. For this reason, it will not be difficult to find formulas that guarantee the presence of the different Spanish languages in the audiovisual offer of the different online video platforms. It would be enough, for example, to help all feature films and series produced in Spain have dubbing and / or are subtitled in the different Spanish languages. And make the different operators oblige themselves to make all this linguistic wealth available to viewers.
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It is necessary to recover the inspiring spirit of the common European project and the consensus of the CE78. The defense of multilingualism in Spain is the defense of the richness of diversity. Our frameworks of coexistence in Europe, Spain and Catalonia, give us the tools to build the space for coexistence and diversity that we need. Let’s use them.
Forgetting past mistakes brings us closer to the risk of repeating them. Europe and Spain cannot go through a devastating confrontation between nationalisms again. Catalonia either.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com