There are still people who simply cannot believe that pupils in Catalonia are limited in their ability to learn Spanish, although the mother tongue of the majority of Catalans is Spanish and not Catalan. It's almost as if in Cardiff they only teach in Welsh.

However, the headlines of the last few days regarding the verdicts of the highest Spanish and Catalan courts as well as the behaviour of the separatist government of Catalonia prove this limitation is a fact beyond doubt.

The conditions in Valencia's schools are quite similar to those in Catalonia, even if they are not yet as „advanced“. But for this progress, a lot of money flows from Catalonia to their so-called „països catalans“ (Catalan countries).

To understand, it is enough to read the various headlines of the last few days.

23.11.21 Cronica global titels: „The TS (Spanish Supreme Court) overturns language immersion and the (Catalan) Generalitat rejects 25% of Spanish“ and further explains: „The TS rejects the Catalan government's appeal against the Catalan Supreme Court's ruling that at least a quarter of classes must be held in one of Catalonia's two official languages.“

24.11.21 europapress: „Aragonès calls on Sánchez to defend the model of linguistic immersion after the TS ruling“. Aragonès is the separatist president of Catalonia, Sánchez the Spanish president. So this is a call to disregard the ruling of the highest Catalan court and the highest Spanish court.

Disregard is part of separatist politics. Hundreds of Catalan families have been petitioning the courts since 1994 for their pupils to be allowed at least 25% of the curriculum in Spanish in Catalan schools. That's 27 years of harassment by Catalan authorities that these families have had to endure.

The mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, acts no differently: she joins the Catalan government against bilingualism in Catalan schools! What a tyranny to understand 25% as bilingual and even strictly reject that small proportion.

25.11.21 El Español describes Madrid's pathetic reaction to these blatant violations: „The government rejects Aragonès' disobedience to the Spanish language, but will not press him to comply with the law.“

The (conservative) PP led by Pablo Casado is calling for a §155 for education. (With §155, the Catalan government was ousted in 2017 after Puigdemot's indefinite declaration of independence and new elections were ordered). What hypocrisy! Pablo Casado would do better to call on the president of his Galician daughter People's Party (Partido Popular de Galicia), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to abide by the law and immediately end the language imposition there, which is the same as in Catalonia, and also immediately ensure 25% Spanish in the schools there.

But the situation of this language dispute is too convenient for all ruling parties in Spain. The real problems, including rampant corruption, do no longer make the headliens. These parties arrogate to themselves, instead of the parents, the right to decide on the language to be used in class. In the autonomous regions, this dispute can also be excellently used for financial arrangements/blackmail with the Spanish state budget. This is only at the expense of the pupils, who have no lobby anyway.

The problem is exacerbated by the imperial claims of the Catalan separatists, who regard the province of Valencia and the Balearic Islands, among others, as parts of Catalonia and find compliant supporters in the governments there.

So it is not surprising that the mayor of the city of Valencia, Joan Ribó, granted another 419,000 euros to a group of Catalanists in Valencia while he cut funding for the Valencian cultural society Lo Rat Penat. „The main task of this society was and is the promotion, communication and dissemination of the Valencian language and culture“ (Spanish Wikipedia) The subsidies went to groups such as the Escola Valenciana, Acció Cultural etc., which have always been financially supported by Catalonia. I have reported repeatedly in my blog since 2018 (search for Escola Valenciana and Even more taxpayers' money for separatists)

Yet the solution would be so simple. The governments in the various autonomous regions would abide by the respective constitution and the courts. This means that the administration works in the respective official languages and at the schools the parents should decide on the election of the language of instruction.

A petition for a referendum is currently being collected for these demands in the province of Valencia. It is about time that something happens, because the Valencian Las Provincias already reported on 22.11.21: the Valencian Minister of Education „Marzà is pushing for spoken and written tasks to be in Valenciano to influence the students' grades“.