Spanish prevails over subsidized cultural festivals

PalmThey received between €30,000 and €80,000 in public funds from various Balearic institutions for the 2024 editions, and yet the presence of Catalan on their social media, websites, and official media outlets was either anecdotal or nonexistent. We're talking about festivals such as the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, which will celebrate its fourteenth edition in Palma next October, the CAN Ibiza Art Fair, and the Paco de Lucía Mallorca Festival, all of which benefited from grants such as those offered by the Institute of Balearic Studies (IEB) for the organization of these events. However, the predominant language in all of their communication channels was Spanish, followed by English.

In fact, the website of the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival, one of the oldest of the numerous film festivals currently held in the Balearic Islands, only offers two options for choosing the language in which the content is offered: Spanish, symbolized by the flag of the Spanish State, and English, represented by the flag. Catalan is slightly more present, however, on its Instagram profile: it is the language used in posts intended to thank institutions such as Palma City Council, the Consell de Mallorca, the Institute of Balearic Studies, and the Government of the Balearic Islands for their support, all of which are accompanied by texts exclusively in Catalan. On the other hand, to share festival content, such as the lineup, dates, and first guests, among others, posts on this channel are mainly in Spanish, English, or both. Among others, this festival has been invited to participate in ITB Berlin thanks to institutions such as the Consell de Mallorca and the Government, and has also been a beneficiary of IEB grants for fairs and festivals in its last seven editions, with amounts granted between €44,000 and €75,000 annually.

The same is true of CAN Ibiza Art Fair, an art fair that held its fourth edition last June at the Fecoev fairgrounds in Ibiza and has a parallel event in Madrid. For the 2024 Ibiza edition, held from June 26 to 30 of last year, the organization received €54,000 from the aforementioned IEB grant, and also included the Consell d'Eivissa among its official sponsors. Even so, the website dedicated to the Ibiza fair doesn't offer the option to view its content in Catalan—again, the two options are Spanish and English—and among the posts made on the event's official Instagram profile and dedicated to the Ibiza edition, only one word appears in Catalan: "Thank you." Everything else is displayed in Spanish and English.

These two languages are also the ones primarily used on the social media platforms of events such as Ibicine, the Mallorca International Art Awards, and the Paco de Lucía Mallorca Festival, although the latter two have Catalan versions of their website content. The former, a film festival that will hold its ninth edition between January and April 2026, is supported by, among others, the Consell de Ibiza and the Sant Antoni de Portmany Town Council, according to its website, which is only accessible in Spanish and with some content in English, as is also the case on its social media platforms. As for the MIA Awards, which received €15,000 in the 2024 IEB competition, the content shared on its Instagram profile is primarily in English and Spanish. Finally, the Paco de Lucía Mallorca Festival, which in addition to receiving €6,000 in funding from the IEB (Spanish Institute of Education and Culture) is one of the few events to receive a nominal grant from Palma City Council, with a planned budget of €30,000 by 2025, is the primary language used by its organizers to share their content on social media. In fact, none of the posts made on the festival's official Instagram profile during the month of March, while the fourth edition of the event was taking place, were in Catalan.

Requirement or evaluation criterion?

Among the objectives of the Language Normalization Law is "to promote the use of the Catalan language in all media," and Article 4 of the same law states that "the public authorities must adopt the necessary measures to effectively promote, foster, and foster the normal use of the Catalan language." Even so, to obtain the subsidy for fairs and festivals from the Institute of Balearic Studies—with a budget for the 2025 call of €1,750,000, while the subsidy for the 2026 call for proposals is less than €500,000—the use of Catalan in the dissemination of the language is not a requirement. It is indeed one of the evaluation criteria, which until the 2024 call could represent up to 10 points of the total 100, while for the 2025 call, the maximum score has been reduced to six: three for those projects that make "use of the Catalan language in all dissemination and communication channels of the event" as well as "projects that promote the use of Catalan and that use the Catalan language during the development of activities." To compare it with another of the scales taken into account, the additional score that can be obtained in this same call for proposals for including "actions carried out by creators, entities, or groups that are natural or resident in Formentera" is five points.

Sources from the Institute of Balearic Studies indicate that the reduction in the score for Catalan for the 2025 call, included in the rules in the section on "linguistic sustainability," is due to "complaints collected among grant applicants." "They told us it was difficult to obtain all the points in this section and that if it was weighted so heavily, applicants would receive low scores," explains Llorenç Perelló, director of the organization. "However, the Catalan government's position is clear in this regard," he adds, "because what we seek is to subsidize artistic and cultural quality, and we try to ensure that all projects pass through the same criteria, regardless of language or discipline. However, to obtain the grant, a minimum of fifty points is required, which means the six points for the use of Catalan are enough." Currently, the IEB is, according to its website, an "agency dependent on the Government of the Balearic Islands dedicated to promoting the language and culture of the Balearic Islands." And, in fact, this same organization offers various grants for promoting the Catalan language, one of which is for "performances and the creation of videos in Catalan for social media."

In any case, Perelló is open to assessing these issues "by reviewing the current criteria, many of them inherited," and points out that the requirements regarding Catalan, in terms of content, should be adjusted to the reality of the different disciplines. "For example, in the world of cinema it's complicated. For a festival to have a program mostly in Catalan isn't so simple when the productions we see in theaters are mostly not in Catalan, neither in the original version nor dubbed," he adds.

"A superficial and decorative use"

Shortly before the start of the latest edition of the Mallorca Live Festival, held last June, the organization Plataforma per la Llengua issued a statement denouncing "the imposition of Spanish on the posters, in ticket sales, and in the musical programming." Among other things, sources from the organization pointed out that the presence of Catalan on the stages was "testimonial," with only three artists performing "mostly in the native language of Mallorca" and asserted that "having a Catalan version of the website does not guarantee dignified or standardized treatment for the native language in Mallorca, since the Catalan version presents Spanish in Catalan." Furthermore, the statement also spoke of "place names in Castilianized forms such as Alcudia, Binissalem, Pollensa and Santa Ponsa" that appeared on the shuttle bus posters. Regarding content on social media, Platform for the Language insisted that the graphic image being disseminated was exclusively in Spanish and that "Catalan was relegated to message descriptions as a second language." "This marginal use of Mallorca's own language on digital channels further reinforces the scope of musical culture," they added.

"We see it a lot now, on social media, and not just with cultural events," explains Marina Garcias, Platform for the Language delegate in the Balearic Islands, "posting things in Spanish, English, and Catalan, and it seems like you've already fulfilled your duty. But if you put a minority language in third place, as many do on Instagram, it's clear that no one is going to read it. They make a decorative and superficial use of it, I would even say folkloric." In a time of linguistic emergency like the current one, when only 18% of young people in the Balearic Islands primarily use Catalan, we cannot allow these things. There must be a clear commitment to holding cultural events in Catalan, and we must ensure that all subsidies and public funds allocated include language clauses."