The introduction of the new legislature seems to have corrected with a stroke of the pen an anomaly that until now the PSOE said was impossible to amend: that the Catalan (either Valencian), he Galician and the Basque could not be used with full normality in Congress. The key piece of the agreements of the Socialists with ERC and Junts to shield control of the Board of the Chamber was the promotion of the three languages in the State institutions and in the EU. But the recognition of this officiality inside and outside Spain is not only a matter of political will, but also faces a rosary of reefs legal, political, economic and logistical that could delay, or even frustrate, the final objective.
Let’s examine the three scenarios that are now open for Catalan, Galician and Basque, and the obstacles that must be overcome in each of them.
The new president of the Congress, Francina Armengol, announced in his first speech that he would allow from that moment to intervene in any of the four languages of Spain. In this case, the instruction is easier because the regulation of the congress, which dates from 1982 and has been amended 15 times, does not address the language issue. It does not authorize or prohibit anything in this regard. In fact, article 32 authorizes the presidency to “direct the debates and maintain their order”, but adds: “it is the responsibility of the president to comply with and enforce the regulations, interpreting them in cases of doubt and replacing them in cases of omission When, in the exercise of this supplementary function, it is proposed to issue a general resolutionthe favorable opinion of the Table and of the Board of Spokespersons“. The progressive majority of the Table would endorse the instruction without problems, and although Armengol could find resistance in the Board of Spokespersons, especially in PP and Vox, most of the parliamentary groups agree.
The president herself has pointed out that she will seek consensus with the groups and with the Congress technical services to apply the measure with the greatest “efficiency” given its “complexities”. And it is that the technical question can be the real stumbling block, due to the economic and logistical cost that the Spanish translation of the interventions in plenary sessions and commissions that are made in Catalan, Basque and Galician. The Chamber should enable translators, booths and headphones for the 350 deputies, which would require raising the annual budget of Congress, which in 2023 was 110.4 million euros.
In the case of the Senate, Junts estimated at the time that implementing the co-official languages in their entirety was around 950,000 euros per year. In 2011, the annual budget for translators amounted to 350,000 euros. The Upper House modified its regulations in 1994 to normalize the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician, which have been gaining prominence in parliamentary life. Currently any language can be used in the motions that go to the plenary session, the initiatives in the commissions, the sessions of the General Commission of Autonomous Communities and in all the writings that are registered in the Upper House
A lawyer of the Courts, Manuel Fernandez-Fontecha, has already warned that it is essential to properly regulate the measure before beginning to apply it because the use of languages other than Spanish can affect the rights of deputies who do not know them and, even, make them defenseless, because they need to understand what is being said to guarantee the necessary parliamentary debate. One possibility would be to approve a reform of the regulations of Congress like the ones that the PSOE rejected when the nationalist parties promoted them in 2011 and 2022.
in state institutions
Both ERC and Junts wrested from the Socialists the commitment to draw up a organic Law for Catalan to be a “fully official language in all State institutions, including justice”. This challenge is much more complex because it can clash with the Constitution, whose article 3 distinguishes between Spanish as the official language in all of Spain and the others only in their respective autonomous communities. The experts Constitutionalists admit to having doubts about what would be the most suitable formula to implement the measure without affecting fundamental rights.
Justice, the only state power that is not decentralized, would be the hardest bone. For example, an organic law could be insufficient to require knowledge of a co-official language such as Essential requirements. Indispensable requirementsand not how merit, to judges, magistrates and prosecutors who are going to practice in a certain territory. This could require the reform of the laws of the Judiciary and the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It could be less complex to promote a norm that regulates the right of citizens to use Catalan, Galician and Basque in all their procedures with state institutions. Once again here we would run into the logistical stumbling block of enabling the necessary material and human measures to guarantee this right.
But, without a doubt, the most Herculean task for the Government will be to get the EU to recognize the official status of the three co-official languages. For now, it has asked the Council, which Spain is chairing during this semester, to include this matter on the agenda of the next General Affairs Councilwhich will be held in Brussels on September 19th. It is not yet clear at what point the petition will reach that meeting, if that day it would be the subject of a first political debate between the ministers or a vote would already take place. But the big problem may be convincing all countries to support a proposal that requires unanimity to be approved.
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For example, France It could show reluctance to recognize two languages, Catalan and Basque, as official in the EU, to which it does not grant this status on its own borders. Objections that could be extended to other countries that have regional languages. Spain can appeal to the precedent of the Gaelic, the only co-official language recognized for use in community institutions. Ireland applied for its official status in 2005 and obtained it in 2007, but it was not until 2022 that it reached full status due to logistical problems. He limited number of translators and technological resources in Irish forced to apply a temporary derogation from the official status that expired last year, 17 years after the Dublin request.
24 official languages and 552 possible language combinations – multilingualism ensures that the European Parliament is accessible and transparent. Watch and learn how it works ↓ pic.twitter.com/hPgODxj4rA
—European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) April 12, 2021
Converting Catalan, Basque and Galician into official languages of the EU would mean translating into these languages not only the treaties and all the documentation and legislation produced from now on, but also all the collection of the last 65 years, from directives to sanctions through regulations or inter-institutional agreements. And it would imply, of course, a strong investment in interpreters to translate all parliamentary debates into three more languages than the 24 that are official today in the EU, a shared expense that some countries can use as an argument to block the request. The European Parliament has 600 translators hired and others 1,500 external interpretersgiven that there are 552 different translation combinations.