“Mr. Tarno Blanco goes up to the Presidency:…It’s intolerable!”. This statement is included in the Diary of Sessions of the Congress of Deputies of March 22, 2011 and refers to the then co-spokesman of the PP in the lower house, Ricardo Tarno Blanco. The former conservative leader thus addressed the president of Congress, Jose Bonoafter what Joan Tarda would have given part of a speech in Catalan. It was the first time that a reform of the regulation to allow the use of the co-official languages in discussions. Bono allowed both Tardà and the spokesmen for the PNV and the BNG, Aitor Esteban Bravo and Francisco Jorquera Caselas, respectively, will speak in Catalan, Basque and Galician, despite the fact that the only language that can be used is Spanish. The proposal was then rejected by the PSOE and the PP. A year ago, in June 2022, they did it again.
The text of the initiative registered more than a decade ago was simple: “Deputies will have the right to use any of the official languages in any Autonomous Community“. The wording hardly changed in the proposal to reform the regulations of the Congress that was debated a year ago. Both received the ‘no’ from the lower house with a majority made up of popular and socialists. Now, the recently elected president of the Congress of the Deputies, Francina Armengolhas announced that it will allow the use of co-official languages in Congress from this same Thursday, after closing an agreement with ERC and Junts. However, he has not explained how it will be implemented in the lower house.
Expulsions and allegations
Experience indicates that this is an ambitious goal. The minister spokesperson herself, Isabel Rodríguez, spoke a few days ago about the “difficulties” of putting it into practice. Last year, the Socialists claimed that currently the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician was limited in Congress to “quotes and phrases immersed in the different interventions” and that in the Senate its use was greater. “Therefore, in the Socialist Parliamentary Group we understand that there is a reasonable balance in the use of languages in the Cortes Generales”, defended his deputy Guillermo Antonio Meijón Couselo.
In addition, that debate did not enjoy the laxity that Bono applied in 2011. In substitution of Meritxell Batet, the vice president of Congress, Alfonso Rodríguez Gómez de Celiswithdrew the floor to Montserrat Bassa (CKD), Miriam Nogueras (Together), Albert Botran (CUP) and Nestor Rego (BNG) for not using Spanish. “Just so that others can understand it,” she argued. In addition, Batet, in an interview with this newspaper, assured that during this legislature there have been deputies who “went up to the rostrum with the aim of provoking” and that they only used Catalan on those issues in which “they did not have much to contribute”. with the aim of expelling them.
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Despite maintaining this position constantly in recent years, in July 2022, the dialogue table between the Government and the Generalitat agreed “to extend the right of political representatives to carry out their work in all the languages of the State”. However, it was pointed out that for this the Senate regulations would be reviewed. Currently, in the Upper House, Catalan, Basque and Galician can be used to defend motionsbut not bills.
In that pact, closed a month after rejecting the use of the co-official languages in Congress, also included the commitment to request “the European Parliament the consideration of Catalan as the language of use in the plenary session“. The Coalition Executive sent a letter to the European Parliament last September making this request. However, it is expected to be rejected. In January 2010 it already happened, when the president of the European Parliament, the Polish conservative Jerzy Buzekdenied a similar request alleging that they were not going to authorize the use of a language that cannot be used even in the Spanish Congress itself.