„In accordance with your request No: 14945, in which you demand the modification of the road signs, which currently, avoiding Castilian, are only in Valenciano, we inform you that, in accordance with the provisions of the Statute of Autonomy of the Autonomous Community of Valencia, both Castilian and Valenciano are official languages of that Community; therefore, and in order to promote the correct understanding of road signs, we will in the future, as far as possible, carry out the inscription of all road signs in both official languages.“

This is how I understand the translation of the letter of reply from the Town Hall of Altea to a request from the organisation „Hablamos Español“ from January 13, 2020.

After the demonstration of some 20,000 parents in Orihuela on 18 January, this is not a success in terms of school policy, where all pupils, regardless of their mother tongue, will continue to be forcibly taught in Valenciano, but it is a step in the right direction.

This statement by Altea Town Hall comes in a heated situation, where in Catalonia some extremists complained a few days ago that in the big fire at the chemical factory in Tarragona, warnings were also issued in Spanish and not exclusively in the minority language Catalan. ^[1]

This small achievement is due to the „Pidelo en Español“ (Demand it in Spanish) campaign by „Hablamos Español“^[2], a non-partisan organisation working for the freedom of choice of language throughout Spain.