The PP counters Vox and presents its law to make Spanish the language of instruction

PalmThe People's Party (PP) has officially submitted its own version of Vox's proposed law to make Spanish the primary language of instruction in schools, accompanied by an alternative text. On the eve of the debate on the far-right initiative, the PP has registered its own proposal to amend the Education Law. With this move, the PP seeks to neutralize Vox's strategy of forcing them to vote against their text in the Balearic Parliament, highlighting what they consider the PP's overly lenient stance on language issues. They are also taking a swipe at the left, as the proposed law they have submitted, they claim, stems from a compromise that the Socialist Party of the Balearic Islands (PSIB) supported in 2022 during the Education Law's legislative process, although it was ultimately dropped after Más per Mallorca presented an amendment. According to the spokespeople for the Popular Party's parliamentary group, Sebastià Sagreras and Marga Durán, they propose modifying Article 135 of the law, which establishes the guiding principles of the linguistic model for schools in the Balearic Islands, to recognize both official languages as "languages of instruction." It also establishes "the promotion of the island varieties of Catalan, native to the Balearic Islands, as a unifying element of our community."

With this proposal, the PP considers the main agreement signed with Vox regarding language for the 2025 budget to be dissolved. "We are fulfilling our electoral program and one of the agreements with Vox to approve the budget, and we are recovering the consensus reached during the processing of the 2022 Education Law, which the PSIB surprisingly ended up rejecting," Sagreras said at a press conference. "This protects a model of linguistic coexistence that exists in our autonomous community, where Catalan and Spanish coexist," he said. The PP had no objection to leaving the initiative to introduce the use of Spanish as a language of instruction to Vox. However, from the outset, it warned that it would not accept any crossing of the red lines set by the president, Marga Prohens. As Durán explained, the far-right proposal included "eleven modifications to eleven sections of the Education Law" and introduced a provision repealing all regulations of equal rank that contradicted it. "This affects the Language Normalization Law and calls into question the autonomy of schools," he emphasized, which was unacceptable to the PP. For this reason, the party will vote against it. "The processing of this law will end tomorrow," Sagreras said.

"The ball is no longer in the PP's court."

With this shift, Sagreras warned that the ball is now "no longer in the PP's court," but in Vox's, which he urged to negotiate the spending cap. "The repeal of the Historical Memory Law and the use of Spanish as a language of instruction were the two most important points for Vox in the budget agreement," he emphasized. Regarding the 2026 budget, Manuela Cañadas's party had requested a timetable from the regional government outlining how it intends to implement the points of the previous agreement. This Tuesday, Cañadas lamented that they had not yet received it. Vox confirmed that they were unaware that the PP, with whom they met last week, was preparing its own text on the Education Law.