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Features
9 March 2025 2.00 h

Marga Payola

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATOR OF PLATAFORMA PER LA LLENGUA

“We will only accept full official status for Catalan”

“whoever asks for more information is just putting obstacles in the way. This confirms that it is a purely political issue”

In Au­gust 2023, Spain’s for­eign min­is­ter José Manuel Al­bares sent a let­ter to the Coun­cil of the Eu­ro­pean Union re­quest­ing that Cata­lan, Basque and Gali­cian be con­sid­ered as of­fi­cial lan­guages of the Eu­ro­pean Union. A year and a half later, lit­tle progress has been made.

Did you fore­see the issue being so com­pli­cated?
First of all, let’s re­mem­ber that Cata­lan is the 13th most spo­ken na­tive lan­guage in the Eu­ro­pean Union. Until now, when­ever a re­quest has been made to make a lan­guage of­fi­cial, the Coun­cil has ap­proved it with­out much prob­lem. It had never taken so long. Tech­ni­cally, gain­ing of­fi­cial sta­tus is sim­ple and easy, but po­lit­i­cal will is needed. And that is cur­rently lack­ing.
Which gov­ern­ments are against it?
The states with reser­va­tions are the same ones that had them at the start, such as Swe­den and Fin­land. We have cam­paigned a lot in these coun­tries, with the likes of Pep Guardi­ola and Ai­tana Bon­matí, to try to im­pact pub­lic opin­ion, but so far there has been no change in po­si­tion. We be­lieve that these are gov­ern­ments that are close to the Pop­u­lar Party. One day some­one from the PP should ex­plain why they op­pose the of­fi­cial sta­tus of Cata­lan, con­sid­er­ing that it does not go against the of­fi­cial sta­tus of Span­ish.
Ex­perts like Vi­cent Cli­ment-Fer­rando say that Cata­lan gain­ing of­fi­cial sta­tus will be “com­pli­cated, if not im­pos­si­ble”.
Every­thing is more com­pli­cated when other is­sues get mixed up with it, but gain­ing of­fi­cial sta­tus is sim­ple. All legal ad­vice is that there’s no need to change any treaties; it just needs to be ap­proved by the Coun­cil. Trusted sources con­firm to us that no more in­for­ma­tion is needed and that who­ever asks for more is putting ob­sta­cles in the way. This con­firms that it is a purely po­lit­i­cal issue.
What is the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion?
The issue is stuck. Every­one is wait­ing for Spain to ask for it to be put on the agenda. The issue has seen no progress be­cause the nec­es­sary ef­fort to do so has been lack­ing. If Spain asked for it to be dis­cussed in the Coun­cil, mem­ber states would not op­pose it.
Is there any op­ti­mism that the lan­guage will achieve of­fi­cial sta­tus?
It’s a pro­posal that has broad so­cial con­sen­sus in Cat­alo­nia and the Eu­ro­pean Union. A CEO sur­vey last year found that 85% of Cata­lan speak­ers sup­port of­fi­cial sta­tus. And in a sur­vey by the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion last year, 84% of Eu­ro­peans were in favour of bet­ter pro­tect­ing the lan­guages of Eu­rope, and the high­est pro­tec­tion is of­fi­cial sta­tus. What we want is to be nor­mal EU cit­i­zens, lin­guis­ti­cally speak­ing, just like the Finns, the Swedes, or the Slovenes. If the EU wants to be cred­i­ble in de­fend­ing human rights, it must also recog­nise lin­guis­tic rights. And this im­plies recog­nis­ing the of­fi­cial sta­tus of Cata­lan. I’d also like to add that, as stated in ar­ti­cles 21 and 22 of the Eu­ro­pean Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights, there can be no dis­crim­i­na­tion on grounds of lan­guage. The EU has is obliged to re­spect the lin­guis­tic di­ver­sity of its cit­i­zens. In this sense, recog­nis­ing the of­fi­cial sta­tus of Cata­lan would achieve com­pli­ance with these prin­ci­ples and we’re sure that we will achieve it
Is there a risk of achiev­ing a par­tial, hy­brid agree­ment?
There is this risk. We un­der­stand that the use of Cata­lan would only be al­lowed in ple­nary ses­sions in par­lia­ment. It would be nec­es­sary to get clar­i­fi­ca­tion on this issue to see if Cata­lan could be used in com­mit­tees, where is­sues are de­bated in de­tail and in depth. How­ever, adding Cata­lan to the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment’s ple­nary ses­sion would only be a tech­ni­cal issue. In ad­di­tion, the cost would be very low, be­cause some Span­ish in­ter­preters are al­ready Cata­lan speak­ers. What I can as­sure you is that Plataforma per la Llen­gua will not ac­cept any­thing less than full of­fi­cial sta­tus for Cata­lan.

in­ter­view Cata­lan lan­guage

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