The exact number of people killed during this demonstration in Bangla Desh in 1952 is not known. The government (then still based in Pakistan) had decided to only allow Urdu as an official language. Not much more than during the suppression of the uprising by South Africans in Soweto, in which over 700 people were probably killed. It is also not known how many Ukrainians may have lost their lives because there is hatred of Russia and a ban on all non-Ukrainian languages (Russian, Romanian, Hungarian). We do know, however, that the Ukrainian language ban is one of the causes of the situation we see every day in the news about the war.

Of course, these circumstances are nowhere near as dramatic in Spain. But it is nevertheless a reason to take the day of remembrance on February 21 as an opportunity to reflect on the situation in Spain. Language imposition breeds hatred and ultimately violence. This makes it all the more incomprehensible that Spanish politicians of all stripes, whether extreme Spanish nationalist or extreme regional nationalist, are still depriving many parents of their right to choose the language of instruction for their children. The organization Hablamos Español has published some of the voices of those affected.

In the following I have translated a selection of some of the letters and comments that Hablamos Español has received, not only about the DÍA INTERNACIONAL DE LA LENGUA MATERNA:

“Hello, good morning, for me it is a great aberration, it hurts my soul that our children cannot study in Spanish, it hurts me a lot. Whoever wants to learn Catalan, let him do it, but we live in a country called Spain, whose official language is Spanish, with a grammar that has been written since 1492, with an impressive wealth, and they are training illiterate people in their own country, and forcing them to learn in a language that many of the Catalans themselves no longer want. Catalan has become an unfriendly language, and those of us who study in French know that many of its words derive from it and that it is based on everything opposite to Spanish. As a friend of ours, the Pompeu Fabra from Burgos, says, he dedicated himself to creating a grammar opposed to Spanish. I hope we succeed, but currently, it is torture for our children to study in Catalan and not in Spanish.“

“Those absurd regional rules of not being able to study in Spanish in Spain must be revoked now. Let the State mechanisms intervene to see if they serve any useful purpose.“

“I am neither Galician nor Valencian but the fact that we have restricted Spanish in Spain seems too much to me.“

“No one should deprive parents of the right to choose the language of their children's schooling. That public powers claim the right to interfere in the lives of citizens in this way, for me, is an attack on freedom. Freedom is not negotiated.“

“Obviously I find it OUTRAGEOUS UNACCEPTABLE“

“SHAMEFUL that thousands of innocent children without the ability to choose are subjected to the aberration of “linguistic immersion” in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, the Basque Country, Navarra and Galicia. I cannot understand the damage that these parents do to their children by preventing them from studying in the 2 most used language in the world.“

“maternal and therefore not paternal, you will never be happy in that language, you will become frustrated and end up giving up. Many of us as children, when Basque was nothing more than a subject, had to go to support classes and even our selectivity grades were quantitatively lowered. Many children of that time, if they had studied in model D, would not have made it to university, and if they had, they would have had many gaps in all skills. A student who arrives at the University in this context will be forced throughout his existence to cover his innumerable gaps autonomously with the effort and time involved or pay out of pocket for training help in order to be competitive.“

“It is absurd that children are forced to attend school in a regional language that is not even their own and that they do not understand.“

“My opinion is that preventing a child from being able to study in their native language is like rape or amputation.“

“It should be a right, not a privilege, to be able to speak Spanish wherever and whenever you want. No obligation or imposition of any language. And that there is the possibility and option to learn any dialect for anyone who wants it“

“Today is Mother Language Day, and three days have passed since the result of the regional elections in Galicia. I just want to say that, given the electoral result, it seems that the parents of children in that region do not care much about linguistic indoctrination and the imposition of a non-native language.“

“In the Valencian region, which is where I live, they don't seem to care too much either. And the autonomous government (pp-vox) assured us that there would be a choice of language.“

“It seems absurd to me, but we can handle them, this political class will end by... 'Away with them,' everything will come“