Three articles dated 11 November 2022:
El País: Up to four days of waiting in the emergency room of the General Hospital of Valencia to get to a bed in the ward!
El Mundo: Puig's (Valencian) government defends that it values a doctor who masters Valenciano more than his doctorate:
ABC: The (Valencian) government of Ximo Puig confirms itself: Valenciano for doctors is valued three times more than the doctoral thesis
What is it really all about?
This petition for equality of languages in Valencia instead of the compulsory Valencian language Valenciano alone had no effect. It also took a court to get the Valencian parliament to deal with the petition in a public hearing. Since then, reports have suddenly surfaced that doctors in the Comunidad de Valencia have turned away patients if they only spoke Valenciano and no Spanish.
I have little doubt that the proportion of a...holes among doctors corresponds to the proportion in the population as a whole. So it is quite possible that such incidents actually occurred or that incidents were exaggerated and/or provoked.
In my experience, however, the vast majority of Spanish doctors go out of their way to help, regardless of the language of the patients, and the whole Valencian coast is crowded with residents and tourists who speak little or no Spanish at all. Valenciano would be the easiest exercise there, it's kind of like a Londoner having to understand Scottish.
Only the Spanish governments, whether in Madrid or in the autonomous regions with regional languages, make no effort at all to end the language dispute. Divide and rule - and humiliate those who depend on the public health system, one might add.
There is no doubt that language barriers can be a hindrance to medical treatment. Those who are in the emergency room need help quickly, and if a doctor or nurse cannot understand enough Valenciano by any stretch of the imagination, how difficult would it really be in a region with a forced language to find an assistant with the appropriate knowledge? Hardly, if there are enough staff.
But that is not the point, there is too little equipment and above all too little staff, with or without Valenciano. This stupid Valenciano requirement for the staff only exacerbates the shortage. The public health system in Spain is also completely underfunded. How convenient to get people to argue about languages instead of the requirements of a system caring for the patients. At least they have something to do while waiting in the emergency room? No, not „something“, but arguing about languages!
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