Susana Naranjo, the new general director who has on the table apply 25% of Spanish in Catalan schools

The Government of the Generalitat has approved this Tuesday the appointment of Susana Naranjo as new Director General of Curriculum and Personalization, the area of ​​the Department of Education in charge of ensuring compliance with the judgment of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) on the 25% quota of Spanish in Catalan schools. Naranjo, who until now was the director of the department’s Territorial Services in Barcelona Comarcas, takes over from Núria Aymerich, who this Monday announced her resignation to dedicate herself to local politics.

Born in Barcelona in 1972, the new general director has a degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Barcelona and a diploma in Teaching, Special Education, from the Ramon Llull University (1998). Since 2001 she has worked in the Education department, where she has performed different functions, such as ESO tutor, department head, host classroom tutor or Language and Cohesion coordination. She has also been academic secretary of the Llobregat Institute and director of the Jaume Botey Institute, both in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

Naranjo will have on the table the thorny issue of the judgment of the TSJC, ratified a few days ago by the Supreme Court, which obliges the Generalitat to guarantee 25% of Spanish in the classrooms. The matter is of enormous legal complexity. One of the keys will be the current education law, the Lomloe or ‘Celáa law’, that forces the students to know Catalan and Spanish perfectly when they finish the compulsory secondary stage. It is something that happens in the classrooms of Catalonia, the reality of the day to day. La Lomloe adds that if a student has gaps in either of the two languages, they should have reinforcement classes.

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On the other hand, the law prior to this regulation, the ‘ley worth’, no longer in force, established that “Spanish is the vehicular language of education throughout the State and the co-official languages ​​are also in the respective autonomous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.” That same law included many articles that were later annulled by the Constitutional Court.