Conservatives have decried an effort from Spain’s governing Socialists to make a local language co-official with Spanish in the northern region of Asturias. The move, they say, would lead to the relegation of Spanish to secondary status, encourage social disunity, and foment yet another separatist movement.
Earlier this week, the Asturian government, headed by Spain’s governing Socialist Party together with smaller left-wing parties, presented a proposal to change the region’s Statute of Autonomy to make the Asturian language co-official.
Adding further complication, they also want to make another language, Eonavian, co-official. There is a dispute over whether this is really just a dialect of Asturian or the neighbouring Galician language.
The proposal failed to win the support of the required three-fifths of the region’s parliament. However, this is unlikely to stop proponents from trying again.
The opposition centre-right Partido Popular and the right-wing VOX warned that the move could lead to educational policies similar to those in Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia, where Spanish is pushed into the background and the co-official regional languages are heavily promoted.
The Asturian language, also known as “Bable” (pronounced “bab-lay”), is spoken by around half of the region’s population. Asturias’ Statute of Autonomy currently says that the language “will enjoy protection” and its use in media and education “will be promoted,” however it does not make the language co-official with Spanish.
Beatriz Zapico, spokeswoman for the Platform Against Co-officiality of Asturian, told El Debate that the promotion of co-official languages to the detriment of Spanish encourages separatism, as has happened in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
The Platform has always defended Asturian culture, but co-officiality would force all Asturians to know how to write and speak Bable. And laws are there to be complied with. The Constitutional Court has been forceful in stating that a co-official language would be a vehicular language in education and everyone would be obliged to know it.
In addition, she said the cost of making the language co-official would amount to more than €200 million:
Behind the linguistic imposition there is an ideological and economic interest. The Socialist government in 2020 requested a report that was carried out by a professor of Constitutional Law. Pressure was put on him to assess what would be the cost of co-officiality. Well, this report was hidden from all Asturians because of what was deduced from it: that the cost of imposing co-officiality would exceed 200 million euros.
Spanish politics has been plagued by regional separatist movements since the late 1970s. Most parts of Spain now have a regionalist movement of some description, which could seek anything from greater autonomy to full independence.
The now-defunct Basque terrorist group ETA killed an estimated 900 people before it disbanded in 2018.
Catalonia also witnessed significant social and political upheaval when its regional government, headed by Carles Puigdemont, tried and failed to declare independence from Spain in 2017.
The current national government, headed by the Socialist Party, is propped up by numerous separatist and regionalist parties from various parts of Spain, including Catalonia and the Basque Country.
