The wolf sheds its teeth, but not its thoughts

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. A language is much more than a tool for communication; it is a cultural expression, a symbol, an identity. When a language dies, a way of understanding the world and a priceless cultural heritage disappear forever.

It is evident that the Catalan language is in a process of regression. Every day that passes, Catalan has less presence in public institutions, less presence on the street, less presence in businesses, and now, thanks to the policies of the Government of the Balearic Islands, it also has less presence in schools, the last true bastion in the survival of the language.

What actions has the Government taken so far? The establishment of a linguistic segregation plan that further marginalizes Catalan, a lowering of the level required to obtain certification titles, exemptions from the Catalan requirement to fill job positions, forced bilingualism… What is the objective pursued by all these actions? To minimize Catalan until it becomes a second-class language, a folkloric language for exclusively domestic use.

It may not seem so, because the People's Party has improved in its concealment, but we are not better off than in the disastrous era of the TIL under the infamous president José Ramón Bauzá. Perhaps the attacks on Catalan are not as frontal or explicit, but they are equally lethal. President Margalida Prohens and counselor Antoni Vera are not storming the walls of Troy, but they are building the horse with eagerness and without rest. Instead of protecting one of the most precious treasures this land has, they persecute and harm it to maintain a government that is increasingly submissive to the far-right, heir to an ominous past.

One cannot love what one does not know. The schools of the Balearic Islands have been the refuge of the Catalan language, the place where children have learned to know it, to master it, to appreciate it, and, ultimately, to feel it as something of their own. Today, schools represent the only space where children from all corners of the world have the opportunity to learn and use Catalan. Depriving them of this is to eliminate the last possibility they have of being in contact with the language of the land that has welcomed them. Where will they learn Catalan if their families do not speak it? Where will they practice it if fewer and fewer people use it on the street? What value will they give it if they see that the government that is supposed to protect it constantly despises it? 

The UOB Ensenyament union was born against the TIL and remains intact in the defense of the Catalan language. For us, defending it is more than a non-negotiable principle: it is a necessity and an urgency. Churchill promised his people that he would fight to the end, in all areas and at whatever cost, against Nazi Germany. UOB Ensenyament will fight to the end, in all areas and at whatever cost, against any government that attacks the Catalan language.