With the relaxation that is now taking place in Spain, there are also more opportunities again to fight the language imposition.

While resistance is growing in the province of Alicante, which is the southern part of the Valencian community, Catalonia is demonstrating what it means by language imposition and bilingualism.

In the Comunidad Valenciana, the majority of the population have Spanish as their mother tongue. However, the geographical distribution is sometimes very different. In the southern part of the province of Alicante, there is only a small minority who have Valenciano as their mother tongue. So it is no wonder that the protest against the PLC (Planes Lingüísticos de Centro = School Language Plans) is the most advanced in this area.

The PLC, or „the Multilingualism Law, stipulates that public and state-subsidised schools must begin language immersion with at least 25% of core subjects in Valenciano as early as the 2021-2022 school year, in all levels of education and courses that reach secondary and vocational education. A minimum that will increase every four years“ writes the online magazine El Español

Before the Corona restrictions, more than 20,000 people had already demonstrated against this law in Orihuela. The law violates the constitution and the Valencian Statute of Autonomy. It was postponed at the beginning of the restrictions and is now to be reinstated, according to the PSOE government of Valencia, which continues to pursue its arch-nationalist course under the leadership of Vicent Marzà of the Bloc Nacionalista Valencià. Even the fact that over 70% of the schools in the southern part of Alicante voted against this law has not led to a change in government policy.

Time and again, observers are puzzled by the fact that the issue of language imposition unites both right-wing and left-wing politicians. A clear example of this is Galicia, where the PP is in government. It operates the language imposition for Galician in a similarly dictatorial manner as the Catalan government, which calls itself left-wing, does for Catalan. At the same time, teaching in the mother tongue is neither right nor left. This interference by Spanish politicians is only proof that they do not really think democratically and believe that we, the people, must do what they think is good for us.

This is taking extreme forms, as can be seen on beaches in Catalonia at the moment. From Barcelona, El Periodico reports a whole new form of bilingualism: at several rescue towers on the beaches there are signs in Catalan and English. Spanish? Not a word!