The Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL), which according to the Statute of Autonomy is “the normative institution of the Valencian language”, has published a series of observations (very harsh) on the PP and Vox educational freedom law proposal. The AVL considers that the future regulations that they want to approve “go in the opposite direction to the normalization of the language of the Valencian Community: instead of promoting Valencian, it favors Spanish.”
Given this, the institution demands “an effort from political leaders and all actors in the educational field to provide a space for reflection and dialogue, as other Valencian institutions also request, to help make possible the full normalization of Valencian in the school”.
A final appeal after expressing his “great concern about the situation of inferiority that the Valencian would be left in if this bill were approved”, the content of which he rejects.
The AVL justifies the preparation of the document (agreed upon in the plenary session on April 26 and advanced by El Temps) in the fact that the processing through emergency means “makes it difficult to articulate spaces for dialogue between the government and the Academy,” on the contrary. What happened with other proposals from the Botànic era, but also from the PP, which did allow the AVL to speak out on the matter. Likewise, it stands out that, in the text presented in Les Corts, the word “official” is omitted when talking about the “need to respect Valencian linguistic regulations.”
The institution regrets that the proposal also “omits all reference to the special respect and protection that Valencian deserves” established by higher standards such as the Statute or the Constitution and rejects the equation of the two languages. “Treating someone who is different identically is as discriminatory as treating someone who is in an identical position differently. It is evident that Valencian and Spanish, at this point, are not in an identical situation: while the normal use of Spanish is fully guaranteed, in the case of the language of the Valencian Community, active measures are necessary to encourage the promotion,” explains the report.
Furthermore, the AVL believes that the proposal “treats Community students differently depending on the municipality where they live.” Thus, he believes that “students from Spanish-speaking areas will find it difficult to achieve oral and written knowledge of the two co-official languages ??at equal levels, as established by the Llei d’Ús i Ensenyament del Valencià.” Regarding these areas of Castilian dominance, the AVL makes a forceful statement: “The foreign language has noticeably better treatment than Valencian” in these regions.
Finally, the academic institution doubts that the freedom of choice of language can be made effective in cases where the center only has one class per year or that, with two units, the percentage of students who ask for Valencian does not exceed 25%. In this sense, he emphasizes the “linguistic insecurity” of parents who “will not be able to know a priori if the center they have chosen will guarantee teaching in Valencian.” This is not the first confrontation between the AVL and the Consell de PP and Vox over the Consell’s linguistic policy.
