Today a new chapter is added to the never-ending story of the disputes between ERC and Junts: the discrepancy on how to reinforce Catalan in schools. Junts per Catalunya has announced today that it will not participate in the reform of the Language Policy Law, which it had signed on March 24 together with Esquerra Republicana, the PSC and En Comú Podem. Those of Carles Puigdemont consider that the current text does not shield linguistic immersion against the ultimatum of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which urges the implementation of 25% of classes in Spanish. JxCat’s decision has led to criticism from Republicans, socialists and common people. Among them, those of Marta Vilalta, deputy general secretary of the ERC, who has branded the post-convergent party as “irresponsible”, has lamented “her resignation” and has assured that Junts acts for party interests.
The TSJC gave fifteen days from the date it issued the interlocutory on Monday. The reform of the Language Policy does not have the consensus of the education sector and the platforms that promote and defend Catalan, such as Som Escola or Plataforma per la Llengua. Junts has clung to this very thing to withdraw from the proposal.
JxCat will submit a new proposal to the Government in the coming days, before seeking consensus with other groups, to try to stop the application of the TSJC ruling. The permanent commission of the party’s executive has adopted the decision unanimously not to participate in the agreement with the other groups after listening to the three deputies who have negotiated the reform -Mònica Sales, Francesc Ten and Anna Erra-, as detailed in this Thursday the spokesman and vice president of the formation, Josep Rius, at a press conference.
Before making it public, JxCat has transmitted this message to the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and his partner in the Catalan Executive, ERC. Rius has lamented that the other groups have not accepted the three conditions that they put on the table to continue in the initial four-way pact: “Maintain Catalan as the vehicular language without interpretive, legal or linguistic doubts; protect teachers and the direction of the centers validating the educational and linguistic projects through the Government, and maintaining the reception classrooms as a learning tool.
“You cannot do politics with your back to the educational and linguistic entities”, Rius pointed out, warning that “they will not accept lessons from any party in defense of the language, and less so from the PSC”, after recalling that the Socialists promised to shield the immersion with the Celaá law, after an agreement with the Republicans, and that this has not been the case, or that they endorsed the cuts to the Statute of Autonomy in the Congress of Deputies. “The PSC could have done many things in Madrid,” he stressed. “Catalan is a red line,” Rius concluded.
Instead, ERC has criticized the “irresponsibility” of Junts with his decision today. “Doing nothing, not having an answer or an alternative solution is not an option,” Vilalta criticized. Republicans believe that JxCat is precisely blocking the possibility of building consensus for Catalan. “We confirm that party interests are imposed on those of the country, tactics on the interests of the country; they leave the language at the mercy of the courts,” stressed the Republican leader.
However, Vilalta has not ruled out any scenario. The PSC, ERC and the commons are enough in Parliament to carry out the reform of the Language Policy Law. Vilalta has assured that any decision will be made later, meeting the leadership of his party.
Junts had signed a proposal to reform the language policy law at the end of March, but a few hours later he backed down and left the reform in the freezer while trying to change the initial consensus after criticism from the entities that promote Catalan. Since then, Rius has said, they had tried to work discreetly to articulate a new consensus and he has indicated that they have maintained a certain silence on the issue for this reason. It was not until March 3 that JxCat clearly and concisely revealed those three conditions. Therefore, Rius has accused the other groups of “disloyalty.”
In the PSC they have criticized the “lack of seriousness” and the “tacticism” of Junts, and have asked the rest of the signatory parties of the agreement to maintain it and manage to move forward. The party’s spokeswoman, Alícia Romero, has regretted having learned of the post-convergence decision through the press despite the deference that has been shown to them when they have been demanding time to return to the consensus, but she has summoned ERC to “meet up”, do not let yourself be dragged by Junts’ decision and allow the reform of the law.
Romero has not been closed to the possibility of incorporating some modifications to the wording of the regulatory reform, but he does not see the proposal of Junts and the Government to promote a decree law that modifies the Education Law of Catalonia without changing the Language Policy. “Law decrees cannot regulate rights, that is why the best solution we found was the reform of the Language Policy Law”, he alleged.
For their part, the commons consider the announcement of the postconvergents as “the chronicle of an announced desertion” because since they retracted the agreement “they have not presented any alternative to shield Catalan and protect educational centers.” According to the president of the En Comú Podem parliamentary group, Jéssica Albiach, Junts “neither has a word nor does it present alternatives” to the reform of the law, which is why it has put the ball in the ERC’s court, requiring that the Republicans agree to approve the norm without its partners in the Government.
“That Junts does not have a say does not mean that ERC does not have one”, so the Republicans “must show that they have a say, because, as the spokesperson (Marta Vilalta) has said, it is a matter of putting the country ahead of the party”, has challenged. Thus, the commons have called a meeting with ERC and PSC this Thursday to try to convince them of the need to hold an extraordinary plenary session next week in which to approve the reform of the Language Policy law, without Junts.
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