Anti-Catalan offense in Menorca

Citadel and PalmMenorca is the Balearic island where Catalan is most widely spoken in the streets and where the most families choose it as the primary language of instruction in schools, but it is also where it is now most threatened by the government. The People's Party's (PP) strategic alliance with representatives expelled from Vox and the appointment of the former director of Sa Fundació, the organization that denies the unity of the Catalan language, as Minister of Culture have provoked a gradual struggle against standard Catalan. This is a decision that no one in Menorca had ever questioned, not even the People's Party.

The first step was to preferentially subsidize the use of Menorcan in public tenders and signage. The latest, so far, has been to completely overhaul the Consell Insular's language usage regulations to also include Spanish and prioritize Menorcan in in-person services and the publication of notices, communications, and regulations. The councilor even reserves the option of outsourcing language advice and, to ensure no one can challenge him, has eliminated the monitoring committee that decided how to apply the regulations to the institution, making himself the sole supervisor of the new rules.

Without the support of the Linguistic Advisory Service (SAL) or its main academic body, the Menorcan Institute of Studies (IME), the history professor and graduate whom the PP snatched from far-right parties before the elections has, as their new Minister of Culture, transferred the term "people."

Joan Pons Torres (Ciutadella, 1993), who wants to have Menorcan declared intangible cultural heritage, has also had public bodies dependent on the Ministry use the descriptive article in their social media posts. The association Fem-ho en Català has opposed this and denounced the fierce campaign being carried out to denormalize the language, but the Minister has left on the table the three internal reports—two linguistic and one legal—that recommend heeding the association's advice and using the literary article. His conclusion is clear: social media is also part of the institution's publicity, which is Obligated by law to use the standard in all its public communications.

"He doesn't want to defend our way of speaking, but rather reduce the potential of the language we share with ten million people," argues the Fem-ho en Català association, which accuses Pons of wanting to "folklorize the language to reduce and degrade it to a merely local expression."

The transformation has been sudden. It has taken place since the summer of 2023, when the right wing regained control of the Menorca Island Council and the former director of Sa Fundació took over the Culture department. Because, before the elections, Joan Pons was a critical voice against Marga Prohens's People's Party (PP). "He's a Catalan nationalist; his entire Twitter feed is in standard Catalan," he denounced in April 2022.YouTube channel"This is the one that will defend the interests of Balearic culture against pan-Catalanism."

Even before holding public office, Pons often expressed his anti-Catalan opinions in the press, positioning himself in favor of the toponymMahónInstead of using standard Maó, he said that "Castilian is not the enemy," but Catalan. "From Catalonia, they deny us the linguistic unity of Balearic and Valencian, which are very old and well-documented." He also aligned himself with Vox to reject historical memory laws, laws in favor of feminism, and LGBTQ+ rights. Since arriving at the Menorca Island Council, and with the help of former Vox councilor (now independent) Maite de Medrano, he has turned against standard Catalan. De Medrano, the only councilor in Ciutadella who opposed naming the municipal library after the writer Joan López Casasnovas, arguing that "he was an activist for linguistic normalization," believes that "the Catalan Countries don't exist, nor is Catalan our own language, but rather a language of..." The non-affiliated councilor rejects "Catalan imperialism" and says that "normalization is absurd and nonsensical, preventing true freedom of language choice." With her support, the PP has secured the absolute majority in the Island Council that the ballot box denied them and has been able to push through policies that undermine, even at the territorial level, what is known as the Menorcan model. Joan Pons himself, now the government spokesperson and, as a political opponent describes him, "an exponent of Menorcan Trumpism," is responsible for defending it in plenary sessions. "She makes a false defense of the island varieties and goes overboard, because she uses the definite article 'salted' where it wouldn't matter."

"What they want is to use Menorcan as a weapon to dismantle the standardization process," concludes the Més spokesperson in the Consell, Noemí García. "I wouldn't even need three gin and tonics to swallow it," she quips. "The Menorcan PP is very pro-Spanish." "The regionalist soul of the Mallorcan PP doesn't exist in Menorca," says MP Josep Castells, who believes the Consell is "held hostage by this man's ultra-right ideology." But the Balearic PP claims to be untroubled. Although President Marga Prohens has no doubts about the unity of the language, the need to have Vox in Parliament means she agrees to debate several initiatives close to the Gonellist ideology of the Parliament's president, Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), such as requesting a report from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) on the possibility of maintaining the definite article in speakers' speeches. "We have no friction with the Menorcan PP," sources from the Government point out. "Their position is compatible with the party as long as the Law of Linguistic Normalization and the Decree of Minimum Standards are maintained," they explain. In fact, they emphasize, like Joan Pons, President Prohens "is also in favor of defending and promoting the use of the linguistic varieties of the Islands."