Spain: New administrations set to dismantle Basque and Galician language policy

Wed Apr 15 15:02:25 UTC 2009

New administrations set to dismantle Basque and Galician language policy

Bruxelles - Brussel, Thursday, 02 April 2009 by Davyth Hicks

Both the Basque Country and Galicia held elections recently with
defeats for the Basque nationalists and the Galician
socialist-nationalist coalition governments. Both governments have
spent years developing language policies to regenerate their
respective languages with considerable success. With the change in
Government will this work now be undermined?

Euskadi

The conservative Spanish Partido Popular (PP) is back in power in
Galicia and helping to prop up a minority Spanish socialist government
in the Basque Autonomous Community (Euskadi). The vote in Euskadi in
March was controversial; firstly because the Basque nationalists (PNV)
won the vote - 30 seats to the Spanish socialists 25 - and because two
Basque nationalist parties, accounting for around 10% of the vote,
were banned, raising questions on the legitimacy of the election
result.

On Monday the PP reached an agreement with the Basque section of the
PSOE, led by Patxi Lopez, on a joint programme for government.  The
proposals it has promised include promoting Spanish in the Basque
Country and potentially dismantling, or at least tampering with,
Basque-medium education and language planning.

The newly formed coalition proposes that English be taught alongside
Basque and Spanish. While they argue that this better equips Basque
school children for a globalised future, in terms of parental and
pupil choice it places Basque language learning in direct competition
with English. This may undermine the Basque language regeneration
effort at the same time as strengthening Spanish.

The Basque Country has three language medium education models, Basque
medium, Basque and Spanish, and Spanish only. To date, because of
parental demand, Basque medium has become the most popular while
Spanish medium only has all but disappeared. This has been good for
Basque regeneration but has led to claims from some that Spanish is
“threatened”.

The new policy clearly sets out to promote Spanish and to reverse the
trend of parents to choose the Basque medium model. For example,
“compulsory teaching of the other official language, different from
the language of choice for citizens” is proposed.

Eurolang spoke to language expert Professor Durk Gorter, formerly of
Mercator Education, and now based in Donostia (San Sebastian).

EL: Do you think there's a danger of the new government dismantling
the so far successful Basque language policy?

DG. Many persons involved in the current language policy seem to be
afraid of the changes that the new government wants to put forward.
The new political discourse talks a lot about the “freedom of choice
of language” for citizens in general and for parents in particular;
that discourse implies safeguarding the rights of Spanish as if that
was the weaker language.

Compared to most other minority languages in Europe, the Basque case
is to a high degree successful. There is a general awareness of what
is necessary to revitalize and sustain a small language. However, only
a few weeks ago UNESCO published its 'Atlas of endangered languages'
and it qualifies Basque as “unsafe”.  It seems unlikely that one
government can completely upset or dismantle a language policy that
has obtained such strong and wide public support.  It depends also a
lot on the persons who will be the new ministers for language policy
and for education.

EL: Spanish law states that everyone in the state must know Spanish,
so why does the PSOE / PP Government  overstate that fact in this
agreement and push more Spanish onto the Basque Country?

DG: According to some politicians Basque has been pushed too much. The
political discourse at the Spanish state level is very relevant here.
They perceive the language policy for the promotion of Basque as
compulsory. Probably it is also part of a more general trend in Spain
and other European countries, where there is a reaction of dominant
language speakers against weaker languages.

EL: They talk in terms of equality and access for all parents to have
a choice of either Basque only (Model D and by far the most popular),
Basque and Spanish (Model B)  or Spanish only (Model A). So far the
demand for Spanish only has all but disappeared, yet the new
government seems set to ignore that fact. Its difficult for an
administration to justify paying for a whole stream of education for
which there is no demand. What are the motivations of the new
government when it implies that somehow there was not enough Spanish-
medium education, and what do you think it will do now?

DG: It is certain that the plans for a new generalized model, in which
Basque has a substantial place across the board and where the old
models A, B and D were going to disappear, will not be pursued any
further. Most likely now the models will stay the way they are. They
already provide the freedom of choice for parents that the new
government emphasizes so much. Over the last few years the trend has
been very favourable for the D-model (Basque medium education), that
trend could now be weakened or reversed. The learning of English will
be reinforced further, but in an integrated language teaching model
that does not necessarily have to be detrimental for Basque (or
Spanish).

Effect on Navarre

Eurolang also asked Iulen Urbiola Loiarte, from the Basque language
NGO Euskara Kultur Elkargoa  in Navarre ,about the knock-on effect of
the election there.  Navarre also has a model where Spanish, English
and Basque are taught.

“I do not know what they are going to implement but I do know what
kind of policies have been implemented in Navarre regarding the
normalization of the Basque language by these political parties.

“Navarra has been one of the negative examples of Europe, the steps
backwards in the application of the law, the lack of recognition of
linguistic rights, the restriction in the use of the language with the
administration and education being restricted to certain areas, are
all highlighted in reports both from EBLUL and the Council of Europe.

“Until now Basque Government has been an example of best practice
within Europe. I really hope that it won’t become like Navarre, an
example of bad practice.

“Regarding the consequences for Basque speakers in Navarre, there are
many civic organizations that get funds from the Basque Government in
Euskadi due to the poor financial help provided by the Navarre
government for Basque language projects.

“If the new government reduces or cuts the funds that will be very
problematic for Basque in Navarre as there are many projects that can
not continue without this financial help.

“I do not know the future but I know that the linguistic policies of
the PSOE and PP political parties in Navarre have been a disaster for
the normalization of the Basque language.”

Galicia: PP administration will drop pro-Galician language policies

Meanwhile in Galicia the Popular Party (PP), led by Alberto Núñez
Feijóo, has won its fifth election since the end of the Franco
dictatorship.  PSdeG and BNG lost one seat each to the PP’s gain,
which won 39 seats. One of the first measures announced by Feijóo is
the dropping of a decree on the use of Galician language in education.

The Galician on-line journal Vieiros reported that one of the new
executive's priorities is to remove language policies favouring
Galician language in education which were promoted by the outgoing
government both in nursery schools (Galescolas) and university
education. The policies meant that at least half of the subjects would
have been taught in Galician. According to the PP's general secretary
in Galicia, Alfonso Rueda, the "Galescolas must become nursery schools
without ideology".

Carlos Callon, from the Galician NGO A Mesa pola Normalización
Lingüística and EBLUL MSC leader, has announced a demonstration on May
17th in Santiago de Compestela in protest at the threat to Galician
language policy. (Eurolang 2009)

PSOE / PP coalition agreement for the Basque Country
Bases para al cambio democratico al servicio de la sociedad vasca

A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística
http://www.amesanl.org/index.asp

Euskara Kultur Elkargoa
http://www.euskarakultur.org/

http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3158&Itemid=1&lang=en
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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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