Psc Blames Erc and Junts and Demographics for Catalan's Decline

Independentist parties forgot about Catalan during the Procés, despite the consequences of demographic changes already becoming evident. This is the idea conveyed by the Minister of Linguistic Policy of the Govern, Francesc Xavier Vila, in an interview with the ACN agency. He also criticized the ideological polarization around the language and advocated for a cross-cutting alliance to save Catalan.

The statements come after the results of the latest Survey of Linguistic Uses in Catalonia became known. The report is devastating. The use of Catalan has hit rock bottom and in twenty years has gone from 48% to 32% of the population using it regularly.

The report places great importance on the demographic context. In recent years Catalonia has added 1.2 million immigrants. And although the number of Catalan speakers has increased in absolute numbers, it remains the same or decreases in percentage terms.

This has sparked an intense debate about the impact of immigration on the decline of a minority language like Catalan. Many share the minister's opinion and attribute the Catalan crisis to the failure of the linguistic policy of the Procés in recent years. This directly points to the parties that governed (ERC, Junts, and the CUP).

Catalan, Another Failure of the Procés

The increase in immigration and the decline of natives due to low birth rates has posed a challenge for the preservation of Catalan identity and its language. But demographic changes have not been joined by an efficient policy to promote the Catalan language. It is a reflection of the very nature of what the Procés was, which claimed many causes but in the end, all failed.

Only in this way can it be understood that despite the Procés taking the language as a battleground, Catalan has ended up at historic lows.

On this, Minister Francesc Xavier Vila criticized that during the years of the Procés the language became a trench between independentists and constitutionalists. In this regard, he recalled that parties like Ciudadanos made anti-Catalanism their banner and that this radicalized some positions. Therefore, he advocates for "de-ideologizing" the language, as "the language is shared by all people of a place regardless of their ideology."

Procés Parties Pointed Out

Thus, there is the paradox that the Ministry of Linguistic Policy was an imposition of ERC on the Govern of Salvador Illa but it has ended up turning against them. Now the minister points to them as responsible for the decline of Catalan. And it is not an isolated opinion.

After the results of the report became known, a wave of criticism has erupted against the Procés parties for their management of the language. Although independentism is currently polarized, in this matter there has been unanimity in considering demographic changes as a crucial factor.

They accuse the Procés parties of having promoted massive immigration without a contingency plan to promote the Catalan language. In an adverse context, Spanish has imposed itself as the language of union between immigration and the native population. Another reality of the failure of the Procés and its current decline.