Fwd: Declaration on Spain's offensive against the Catalan Language

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De : joan.pujolar at gmail.com [mailto:joan.pujolar at gmail.com] De la part de Joan Pujolar
Envoyé : mardi 16 juillet 2013 13:33

Objet : Declaration on Spain's offensive against the Catalan Language
 
I am the president of the Catalan Society of Sociolinguistics (http://blogs.iec.cat/socs/). Our executive board has felt it necessary to inform linguists and social scientists around the globe about developments in Spain in relation to language policies. We denounce the renewed persecution of the Catalan language by Spanish authorities, and we attach a declaration providing the details of the matter.

You are probably aware that Spain outlawed the use of Catalan for many centuries up until 1980 in a bid to create cultural uniformity within the country. The memory of General Franco’s dictatorship is still fresh amongst most Catalan adults. And there are good reasons to believe that the current authorities may seek to achieve the same goals through less violent means by taking advantage of the fact that Catalan speakers are demographically in the minority. During the last few years, Spanish authorities have conducted a sustained strategy to decrease education in Catalan, prevent media circulation and broadcasting and even create adhoc regional standards to divide the community. Such behaviour is not deemed acceptable by the international community and is in contravention of UNESCO’s fundamental principles as well as the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, all of which Spain has signed.

We would be thankful if you could do everything in your power to disseminate our declaration and/or its contents. There are a number of ways in which we would appreciate your help:

Publish the declaration in your journal or e-mail list.
Send a letter to UNESCO or the Council of Europe expressing your concern (a letter template is attached)
Forward the declaration to colleagues you believe may be especially interested in this issue.
We hope this letter provides an early warning before the situation in Spain deteriorates and develops in loss of cultural and human rights in a way that may send a poor signal to all the countries and organizations that are working for a future of peace, prosperity and equality.

Yours sincerely,

 

Joan Pujolar

President

Societat Catalana de Sociolingüística

Institut d’Estudis Catalans

C./ Carme 47

08001 Barcelona

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Joan Pujolar Cos
Professor de llengua i literatura catalanes
Estudis d'Arts i Humanitats
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

93 254 (2121) | jpujolar at uoc.edu
Tibidabo 2 (Av. Tibidabo 39-43 C.P.08035)
Curriculum Vitae: http://www.uoc.edu/webs/jpujolar/CA/curriculum/index.html
Grup de Recerca IdentiCat: http://blogs1.uoc.es/identicat/