The pact of the extreme right of the PP and VOX in the Valencian Country that will replace the Botanic government has been agreed with two ties that make it unworthy: the denial of male violence and the crusade against the Catalan language. On the first issue, it is enough to say that the head of the far-right training list has resigned from being part of the government because he was convicted of assaulting his ex-partner, but his group has already announced that it will reward him by placing him as list leader in Congress in the July 23 election. We have seen in recent months how the right-wing media has attacked the coalition government because Bildu’s lists included people convicted of terrorism, a serious mistake by the Basque pro-independence left that it rectified in time, and instead we see we hear and read a resounding silence from this same right-wing media with the fact that VOX brings to its candidacies people convicted of sexist violence.
The other issue that worries about this pact of shame in the Valencian Country is the language. Who will be president of the Autonomous Community, Carlos Mazón, of the PP, has already announced that the pact will eliminate the Linguistic Rights Office and will end any policy of promoting the Valencian language and equalizing the rights of Spanish speakers and Catalan speakers in Valencia, Castellón and Alicante. Once again, the right-wing parties are focusing on the language policies of the progressive governments and have warned that this is also a warning for Catalonia. They are warning us, simply, that if they reach the state government we will return to the years of linguistic confrontation between Ministers Wert or Méndez de Vigo and they will do it even more gesticulating because now they have the VOX Doberman to amplify these measures. The lost decade of Mariano Rajoy’s governments also meant the judicialization of education and linguistic rights with the sole aim of confronting and straining the coexistence between our languages. On July 23 we could return to these times. Certainly, this process of judicialization against our language did not mean any change in the language immersion model in our country thanks to the strength of the educational community, the struggles in the streets and the ideological transversality that defends the language, but it did which has managed to prevent them from continuing to advance because they have devoted energy to stopping the coup of the Spanish right.
We can’t get lost for a second. Let each other stop with nonsense. That Junts and ERC stop competing with each other. That PSC stop looking down on the desired votes of Citizens and that En Comú Podem work clearly for this plurinational Spain that we defend. We must firmly defend the language and linguistic coexistence. It is necessary to empower the educational community, recover the claims in the streets and not be disgusted or afraid of great country pacts that defend Catalan and linguistic immersion as the best tool to defend the dual linguistic competence in Catalonia.
The Spanish right is advancing with hoaxes, fake news and the informational manipulation of the extreme media also in linguistic matters. Accompanying this Pact against the Valencian Country of the PP and VOX, I predict that we will see in the mornings of Telecinco and Antena3 news linked to the ‘persecution’ of Spanish promoted by the government of Botànic and also by Catalonia. Against this we need firmness in the face of interference, a unanimous cry in defense of our rights and transversal political cohesion to avoid the cracks that the right will want to open. And an important reflection: the most powerful tool that working people have is our vote. Let the vote on July 23 also be a vote in defense of the language and linguistic coexistence. Voting language is voting for equal opportunities and social cohesion.
