Graduate in Philosophy and Letters (Catalan Philology section) from the University of Alicante, Verònica Cantó Doménech (Cocentaina, 1964) has been the president of the Valencian Language Academy (AVL) since 2022. We speak with her at a delicate moment for the institution and for Valencian due to the policy that the People's Party and Vox have begun to implement since their arrival at the Generalitat just over six months ago.

40 years after the approval of the Linguistic Normalization Law (LNL), we can affirm that the Catalan language in the Balearic Islands does not suffer from a lack of laws, but from a lack of political will. This is the central idea that emerges when we analyze the trajectory of a tool that, at the time, was essential. That norm established the legal framework necessary to make the official status of Catalan effective and allowed for undeniable advances in areas such as administration, education, and the media. But, above all, it was born from a unanimous political consensus that today, four decades later, seems almost a miracle. A political consensus that was accompanied by a civic movement, led by the OCB, which called for a legal framework for the regulation and protection of the Catalan language, which other territories and other languages of the Spanish state already had. 

Murense, Ferriolense, Poblense, Margaritense, Serverense... even RCD Mallorca and Atlético Baleares. There are countless football teams in the Balearic Islands whose names are in Spanish and which have not been standardized. This legacy of Francoism is still alive today, and the possibility of breaking with the memories of the dictatorship (during which Catalan was completely forbiddenThe effort to recover the essence of teams from municipalities with Catalan-speaking and historical roots is practically nonexistent.