New attack by Vox on the unity of the language: it wants IB3 to be done in "Mallorcan, Minorcan, Ibizan and Formenteran"

PalmaVox once again attacks the unity of language in Parliament. This time it has done so with a question directed at the Director General of IB3, Josep Codony, registered with the table of the control commission on Radiotelevisió de les Illes Balears. "When will we be able to see a news report on IB3 in Mallorcan, Ibizan, Menorcan or Formenteran?" is the request that the spokesperson for the far-right, Manuela Cañadas, will make next Thursday in the parliamentary session. A question that has been registered in Spanish (Vox asked Parliament to stop translating its parliamentary initiatives) and which, foreseeably, the deputy will also formulate in this language, the language she habitually uses.

It is not the first time that the party has made proposals close to linguistic secessionism. The President of the Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne, who denies the unity of the Catalan language, asked that none of his speeches "made in Mallorcan (or any of the variants of the Balearic language) be translated into standard Catalan". He requested, among other issues, that the 'article salat' be maintained in the transcripts of the deputies' speeches in the Diari de Sessions. Faced with this request, the Board agreed to consult the UIB, which flatly rejected this initiative, considering that the denominations of Mallorcan and Balearic language used by Vox have no scientific basis. "The scientific and official name of the native language of the Islands is Catalan or Catalan language", remarked the report, advanced by ARA Balears. Vox also asked the Government to replace the denomination of Catalan with 'Balearic languages' in the Statute of Autonomy, to which the Executive refused. "I want my daughters to study in Mallorcan, not in Catalan," Cañadas defended then in a speech entirely in Spanish. Similarly, Vox has asked to subsidize the Reyal Acadèmi de sa Llengo Baléà, an institution that denies the unity of Catalan and advocates for an unscientific writing of the native language.

On what basis does Vox speak of 'Balearic languages'? Cañadas defended these theses at a press conference in June 2025. "What should be a problem for Mallorcans is that the Catalans like me have stolen their language. Now it turns out that you are on your knees before Catalonia," he told the media. "It cannot be that studying in the mother tongue, which is Spanish, is prohibited and a language is imposed, which is Catalan, which is not even the native language of the Balearic Islands," he said. “It will not be me, who am Catalan, who defends the Mallorcan language, which we all know is older than Catalan,” he continued.

The far-right has also criticized IB3 on several occasions. In a parliamentary intervention a year ago, deputy Sergio Rodríguez said that IB3 "is not necessary", and considered that the public television of the "previous regime" was "of higher quality, more objective and more cultural", in allusion to Francoism. He clarified this during a control commission on IB3 in the Chamber, in which Codony also appeared.