Could you speak in Catalan? “No, however, half will not understand us”

—Samuel, in all sincerity, will you speak to your children in Catalan?

—No.

—In a hundred years, your grandchildren will barely remember that you once knew how to speak Catalan, if you all decide to stop speaking it. In the substrate of the Spanish that will be spoken in Mallorca in a hundred years, only a handful of words from the Majorcan you hear now will remain: “Bé”, “idò”... If you abandon it, the Catalan language will disappear, because no one else in the world speaks it but us. It will go extinct just as the mammoths, the Tasmanian tiger, and the Japanese sea lion disappeared. It will melt into the annals of time like the roar of the last dinosaurs.

Samuel is a student at an ordinary high school in Mallorca. In his day-to-day life, Samuel speaks with all his peers in Spanish. He is ashamed to speak his family's language. Even with his teachers, he always starts in Spanish. Today, his tutor called his mother to introduce herself at the start of this school year. Samuel's mother speaks Catalan with total ease. He, on the other hand, never feels comfortable with it, not at all. This is the reality repeated among many young people of Catalan-speaking origin in many places across the entire territory. On one hand, the chain of transmission from parents to children is being broken, first in the area of competence, with children and young people who have alarmingly lost the linguistic features of Catalan, both in phonetic and in morphosyntactic and phraseological aspects, and who are not corrected by their progenitors, who do not perceive these ‘new’ ways of speaking as an inaccuracy or a problem that needs to be amended; and then in the area of language use, both regarding social use with outsiders and also, even, in the family environment. The abandonments are counted by the thousands.

Thus, therefore, the only linguistically safe environment for young people today, both for those who have learned the Catalan language at home and for those who approach it from a more social environment, is school. Or so we thought. The kind reader might think that the writer is now referring to the linguistic steamroller that schools and institutes have become, where, at best, we find two or three Catalan-speaking students in each classroom.

But no. We were not going to talk about that today. During this start of the school year, educational unions have offered information sessions for new interim teachers to inform them of the nature and functioning of the different requirements and procedures that must be overcome to be able to access a teaching position. The person in charge of one of these information meetings of the ANPE union began his speech in Spanish. At that point, a teacher intervened, asking for explanations for the chosen language. "In any case, half won't understand us." Beyond the linguistically miserable position of this union, whose leaders have no problem switching languages when "good manners" require it, we can infer that the anecdote is neither casual nor gratuitous.

Catalan requirement: A1

This year, the Ministry of Education has decided that the linguistic requirement to access an interim teaching position is an A1. For those who are laypeople on the matter, the A1 is the lowest level that can be accredited in linguistic knowledge. To obtain it, one must demonstrate a certain understanding of simple oral texts and a minimal expressive capacity in the Catalan language. In short, it is enough to mutter a little Catalan and understand a simple instruction, for example. But let the alarmed defenders of the language be calm, because on June 30th, if they have not accredited the C1 plus the FOLC, all these teachers will be dismissed from their jobs. What they do not say is that in the process that will open during the summer to access the lists for the following course, they will be able to opt for a position again if they accredit, attention, oh, surprise, an A1 in Catalan.

At times it seems they want to laugh at us. And more than once they succeed. The Minister, Antoni Vera, with the idea of guaranteeing the total coverage of teaching positions, decides to give away the issue of language, as if this were the obstacle that prevents teaching professionals from being able to come to Mallorca to work. Perhaps if they were provided with houses and apartments at normal and affordable prices, all these future teachers would also find reasonable the need to learn the language of the country where they are going to work as teachers.

Linguicidal policies have always existed whenever the PP has governed. And beware, the PSOE is no saint either... But the skill of Margalida Prohens must be recognized. The president has always acted as a local and a Mallorcan, and she has no problem raising the defense of “our language” and “our signs of identity,” a way of presenting herself to the world much more intelligent than the one the notorious José Ramón Bauzá had at the time. For this reason, instead of having to face an indefinite strike, Prohens and Vera can tour the educational centers, where the educational community waits for them demobilized and with their arms down. It is time to revive.