Is Spain abandoning Spanish? – Bugle

“It’s a fool who has no forgiveness,” Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa said of the reform of the education law by which sparks are emerging in Spain, where the Peruvian writer spends most of his time.

It is the project that seeks to modify the organic law of Spanish education which, among the controversial aspects, intends to omit that Spanish is the official language of the State and the one that should be used in schools to teach and learn.

Until now, the regulations approved in 2013 by the People’s Party – which governed by an absolute parliamentary majority – and which counts the minutes, established that “Spanish is the vehicular language of instruction throughout the state and the co-official languages ​​are also co-official in the respective Autonomous Communities, in accordance with their statutes ”.

“Esquerra, who wants to put an end to Spain, confines himself to asking that Spanish be abolished as the language of Spain”

Mario Vargas Llosa

Writer

But the proposed amendment eliminates the reference that the initial text made to Spanish as “official language of the State” and to “vehicular languages”.

In this way, the door is open to the possibility that the autonomous governments of the 17 communities that make up Spain determine which language is vehicles in the educational community of their own territories.

“I must say that the term vehicle it only really appeared in education legislation in 2013, and yet Castilian has always been a vehicle through history ”, defended the Minister of Education, Isabel Celaá.

And he insisted: “The vehicularity of languages ​​is not in question, languages ​​are conveyed by their own condition, in the broad sense, because they are a tool of communication”.

“We are part of a cultural community made up of around 600 million people with the ability to use Spanish”

Promoter of the reform that all of Spain describes as the “Celaá law”, the minister declared that It is a lie to guarantee that the new law will eliminate Spanish in education: “What he is saying emphatically is that educational administrations will guarantee the right of all pupils to receive education in Spanish and the co-official language, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution and the Statutes of ‘autonomy,’ says Celaá.

“At the end of basic education, at the age of 16, all boys and girls will have a full and equivalent command of the two co-official languages ​​and, in addition, the educational centers have the obligation to compensate by measures for this knowledge, ”he added.

The amendment to the Education Law comes at a pivotal moment in Spanish politics: with the pulse of a neurosurgeon, the coalition government between the PSOE and Podemos articulates friendly gestures towards political parties with necessary parliamentary representation – as the independentist and voracious defender of Catalan. Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña- to have sufficient support in the glassy task of approving general state budgets, the key to governability in Spain.

During the videoconference presentation of his latest book, Complete the leftovers, Vargas Llosa He explained it this way: “The government wants its budgets approved. For that, he needs the voices of Esquerra, the Catalan left. And Esquerra, who wants to end Spain, is limited to asking that Spanish be removed as the language of Spain, ”summed up the Nobel.

“From all this, it follows that Spain is a country that does not have an official language. Well, And what about the five hundred million people in the world who speak Spanish thanks to Spain? How are we going to explain to Mexicans that Spain no longer has its own language because it has been abolished? It’s absurd that he doesn’t have a head, that it doesn’t make sense, ”complained Vargas Llosa.

And, as a member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), he shot: “I think the RAE should speak out very categorically, without entering into the petty politics which is at the origin of the suspension of the Spanish language in an education law. . This, if you say so, is embarrassing to others, ”he said.

Consulted by Bugle, the Royal Spanish Academy he responded with a statement in which he hopes that lawmakers will not cease to provide “the protection that Article 3 of the Constitution grants to Spanish as the official language of the state that all Spaniards have the duty to know and the right to use “.

The Real Academia expressed concern that “the future legal text don’t question the use of spanish in any territory of the State or promote obstacles to the education of citizens in their mother tongue ”.

“We are part of a cultural community made up of around 600 million people able to use Spanish and more than 485 million people who have it as their mother tongue,” the academics agreed in a plenary session. of the RAE which ended almost at midnight. day when the Congress of Deputies approved the reform of the education law.

“This circumstance makes the Spaniards an invaluable asset, which is the common heritage of the nations and peoples who use it as a language of communication and education, and obliges all governments, in particular that of Spain, to guarantee its knowledge and free use ”, declared the RAE.

For more good intentions expressed by the Academy of Languages, the reform, which has already been approved in the Congress of Deputies and now awaits the decision of the Senate, could enter into force next year.

“We will appeal to the Constitutional Court of the Celaá law if the government and its nationalist partners exclude Spanish as a lingua franca and liquidate educational freedom against concerted (subsidized). (President Pedro) Sánchez intends to stay in power by negotiating the future of our children ”, complained the President of the Popular Party and leader of the opposition, Pablo Casado.

Since the reform was approved in Congress, in several Spanish cities demonstrations against the Celaá law have taken place. Parents and educational centers parade in caravans with orange badges, the color of the demonstration.

Madrid. Corresponding