The general secretary of the PSPV, Ximo Puig, has announced this Monday that he has requested the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, that the agreement to allow the use of co-official languages in the lower house formally include the denomination of Valencian under the term “Catalan-Valencian” and not exclusively Catalan, as the former Balearic president said last Thursday.
The leader of the Valencian socialists has assured that he contacted Armengol at the end of last week to address this matter and that the president of Congress, with whom he maintains a very fluid relationship, is “aligned” with this request. Thus, the feeling within the formation of the fist and the rose is that if the initiative to accommodate the co-official languages goes ahead (the legal formula to implement it is still being studied) it would include the double denomination.
It is precisely what Armengol herself has hinted at in recent days. In two interviews granted to La Vanguardia and El País this weekend, the Balearic Islands endorsed the recognition of Valencian by ensuring that “all citizens with a co-official language -as is the case of Valencian in C. Valenciana, included in the Statute– you will see it represented in Congress.”
Along the same lines, Puig has highlighted that “Valencian, in accordance with what is established by the Valencian Academy of Language (AVL), has to be present like the rest of the co-official languages, and it will be so”. Armengol has also assumed these theses of the AVL, which in its 2005 resolution established that “it is a fact that in Spain there are two equally legal denominations” to designate this language: “that of ‘Valencian’, established in the Statute of Autonomy of the Valencian Community, and that of ‘Catalan’, recognized in the statutes of autonomy of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands”.
Deactivate the Consell’s offensive
In relation to the institutional declaration made by the Consell de Carlos Mazón, Ximo Puig has defended that “this is not the time to reopen old wounds and lose ourselves in battles that lead to nothing”, since, as he has defended, “the worst” that it can switch to Valencian “is that it is the object of conflict” as in the 80s. “Those who do not want Valencian cannot lead us to that situation again. The PP sees problems where we see progress”, stressed the former president , who has considered the initiative of the co-official languages as “extraordinarily positive”.
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Puig has criticized that the position of the PP breaks the “harmonic coexistence” of Valencian and Castilian in the Valencian Community and has closed ranks in defense of the AVL, an organization whose “depoliticization” has been highlighted. In this sense, he has advanced that if the institutional declaration of the Consell (which will not be known until September) “defends the use of Valencian”, the PSPV will support it. But he has added that “if they intend to reopen the cultural battle”, as announced by a senior Vox official in the Government of Mazón, the socialists will oppose it.
Regarding the PP’s accusations against the Government for this proposal by Armengol, Puig recalled that “what is an attack against the language is not using it” and that “those who never speak it cannot defend Valencian”. “The decision to allow the use of the co-official languages in Congress is a decisive step that shows that the real Spain ends up prevailing and that we are stronger in diversity”, she concluded.