The Aragonese regions where Catalan is spoken have experienced a number of blunders with regard to the legislation of this language. Do you remember lapao and lapapyp, the acronyms of the official names that Aragon gave to Catalan and Aragonese, between 2013 and 2015?
Now it seems that he has come to his senses. The Aragonese Language Academy, which includes two institutes, one dedicated to the Aragonese language and the other to the Catalan language, has just published an agreement on the regulations for the official use of Catalan in Aragon. Although the regional law allows it to issue regulations, the Aragonese Academy assumes the criteria of the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) and, due to the fact that the Strip is included in the western dialect variant, it also takes into account the criteria of the Valencian Language Academy.
The summary is that what politics tries to divide, linguistics brings back together. It already happened with the creation of the Valencian Academy. As much as the Valencian political interest was that with the creation of this academy different regulations would be established to make people believe that what is spoken in the Valencian Country is not Catalan, they did not succeed. Although with nuances, the Valencian Academy maintains the normative criteria of the IEC.
In all this sidereal, there are three points that must be taken into account. The first is that the IEC was recognized by a royal decree of 1976 as a normative academic center for the Catalan language in all the territories where it is spoken. The later Constitution and the creation of the autonomies diluted this first rule which, nevertheless, the Aragonese Language Academy specifically mentions in its agreement. Let’s go back to the starting box.
The second point is that the IEC is a supra-autonomous academy, it does not depend on the Catalan administration, and its members come from all over the linguistic domain, such as Aragon, Northern Catalonia or Alghero. And the third is that none of the two academies created later have the phrase “Valencian language” or “Aragonese language” in their name, but the Valencian Academy of the Language and the Aragonese Academy of the Language. A clarification: this second does make sense as far as the Aragonese language is concerned.
As an epilogue, it should be added that neither of these two autonomous academies has considered establishing itself as a Spanish language institute. This aspect belongs to the RAE in the case of Spain. Why, then, is the linguistic authority of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans not directly accepted and the money is invested in this cross-cutting institution instead of each autonomy setting up its own stall?
