Several political parties and civil society groups have formally requested that the European Parliament send a mission to monitor whether the regional government of Catalonia carries out its obligation to offer at least 25% of public school classes in Castilian [Spanish].
The European Parliament has accepted the request and appears set to send a mission during the second semester of 2023.
This follows a court decision to block the regional government from discriminating against parents wanting their children to learn Spanish by entirely banishing this language from classrooms, as was initially intended.
The push for a monolingual Catalonia (or rather, a region from which Castilian is barred, unlike English, or Arabic), is a central plank of the separatist project, albeit very much out of step with respect to the region’s history, which has been consistently duo-lingual.
A spokesperson for Ciudadanos Europa, one of the entities requesting the oversight, explained the move in terms of the concern to guard against “the violation of the civil rights of students who have judicially requested to study in Spanish as well, and not exclusively in Catalan, and who see their rights being annulled.”
