The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, chaired by the MEP of the popular group Dolors Montserrat, has debated this Tuesday on the model of linguistic immersion in Catalonia. The event was attended only by MEPs from the popular group, Renew Europe (where Ciudadanos is located) and European Conservatives and Reformists (of which Vox is a part) for the boycott exercised by the social democratic group, Greens, the Left Europe and the MEPs of Junts ( not registered) because they consider that it was a partisan event.
The debate is part of a 2017 petition from the Assembly for a Bilingual School, which has been followed by others on the language immersion model in Catalonia. Following complaints from various petitioners, it was decided last October to send a mission in the second semester of 2023 to analyze the situation of teaching in Spanish.
During the debate, the Catalan language immersion model was addressed, to which experts chosen by the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox were invited. Among those present was Jorge Calero, professor of Applied Economics at the University of Barcelona, ??who spoke about the results of a study in which he himself was the author, which concluded that “student performance in Spanish as their mother tongue is inferior to those who have Catalan as their mother tongue”.
In his speech, he gave as an example that according to the PISA report “students whose mother tongue is Spanish register 10.36 points less in science and 9.84 points less in reading performance”. In his opinion, “one cannot speak of a model of success” in the case of linguistic immersion given the results.
For Calero, “the only Spanish there is is the one that is marginally spoken in the schoolyard and, even so, they try to eliminate that little through people who control what the children say in the playground,” he has criticized.
Along the same lines, Jesús Rul Gargallo, a professor at the University of Barcelona on the Master’s in Educational Center Management, lamented that “Catalan is the vehicular language and that learning Spanish is residual.” “Catalan-speaking students can study in their language, while Spanish-speaking students are forced to study in another,” he argued.
For his part, the Vox deputy in Parliament, Manuel Acosta Elías, who was invited by his party, believes that linguistic immersion in Catalonia is a method of “school and social segregation” and considers that the high level of school dropouts ( 16.9% according to the latest data) are as a consequence of the Catalan model. “I would dare to say that what should be done is apply an educational article 155 to the Generalitat de Catalunya”, added the politician.
“Since the suitability of my person as an expert has been questioned, I would like to remind you that I am a doctor in Philology, a graduate in Geography and History, a master’s degree in Hispanic Literature, a higher level teacher of Catalan, for 25 years I have taught secondary schools and baccalaureate”, he has wielded after criticism.
No other groups or experts have participated in the event, since the Socialist MEPs, Greens, Izquierda and Junts advanced that they would not participate in the event. Before starting, the Danish MEP from The Greens, Margrete Auken, has taken the floor to explain her discomfort at the “totally biased” audience. “This event leads to a manipulation of this commission (…) and that it serves the partisan purposes of the Popular Party, Vox and Ciudadanos”, which is why she explained why they abandoned the event.
However, Montserrat has defended that the process was carried out democratically and has ensured that all groups were given the opportunity to participate, with the aim of having “political, geopolitical and gender balance”. “Everything is public and they can verify that everything was done by democratic procedure and based on majorities,” she explained.
The ERC MEP, Diana Riba, at the end of the act, regretted that it was held on the occasion of a first petition in 2017 in which the Community Executive already argued that it was not within European competence. “The natural decision of the Petitions commission should have been to file this petition as is always done in these cases (…) but the petition is still open and is even being debated in a commission hearing that benefits the political agenda of the right and the extreme right”. Riba believes that due to the partisan use of Dolors Montserrat she should resign as president of the parliamentary commission.
The event was also attended as a guest by the spokesman for Ciudadanos in Parliament, Carlos Carrizosa, who defended that the act served to “inform Europe about the anomaly of Catalonia, the only democratic region of the western world where half of the population cannot study in their mother tongue”.
The Petitions Committee of the European Parliament has the objective of serving citizens, where they can submit complaints about violations or breaches of European law in the Member States. Chaired by Dolors Montserrat, various groups claim that Catalan politics uses her position for the political purposes of her party. An argument that Montserrat has always denied.
