PP-PSOE-DO language pact: this is not the linguistic freedom the PP promised

This week, an agreement was announced between three of the four parties represented in the Galician Parliament.

Feijóo repeats an educational and linguistic promise that he already broke in Galicia
Freedom defeats social engineering: Spanish is now the most widely spoken language in Galicia

The pact, announced by the Popular Party (PP) and signed by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Democracia Ourensana (DO), was explained as follows in a statement published on the PP of Galicia website on Thursday:

"In the educational sphere, one of the key agreements will allow for adjustments to the plurilingualism decree, enabling science subjects to be taught in Galician while maintaining the linguistic balance between the two official languages or —in the case of plurilingual schools— among the three relevant languages.

Consequently, schools will be able to decide voluntarily, within the framework of their own language plans, which language to use for different subject blocks. For example, at the primary education level, they may choose to maintain the current distribution for Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Mathematics, or to swap the languages ​​used for each block."

As was to be expected, separatists from the Galician Nationalist Bloc and allied groups are upset because they want to mandate that 100% of subjects be taught in Galician, overriding the rights of the inhabitants of Galicia—a region with two official languages ​​(Spanish and Galician) and whose Statute of Autonomy is very clear in Article 5: "No one may be discriminated against on the grounds of language". Excluding one of the two official languages ​​from the education system would constitute radical and undemocratic discrimination.

Returning to the aforementioned pact, I hate to be a killjoy, but that is not the "linguistic freedom" that Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the current PP president, promised before the 2009 elections—a promise that helped him garner many votes amidst widespread discontent over the discriminatory policy of the Touriño government (a PSOE-BNG coalition) to mandate more subjects taught in Galician than in Spanish. Feijóo assumed the presidency of the Xunta promising "linguistic freedom," yet nine months later he broke his word, yielding to pressure from the separatist movement. He did so by approving a "trilingualism" decree in which politicians continued to make decisions for parents, imposing language-based quotas within the curriculum.

I was one of the Galicians who voted for the PP in 2009 because of that promise of linguistic freedom. Others might not care that they were sold a bill of goods, but I do. That was a massive deception, and I haven't voted for that party since because, frankly, once a politician lies to me, that’s enough.

No matter what some people say, linguistic freedom means parents being able to choose the language of instruction for their children, within the framework of Galicia’s two official languages. It is not an unusual request: free choice of language is the norm in democratic countries with more than one official language. What is abnormal is the situation in Spain, where politicians make the choice for families, simply ignoring what Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children."

Parents, not politicians or any other organization. I don't think that is very difficult to understand: it is enough to love and respect that freedom which some promised, only to later betray it.

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Photo: Partido Popular. The current President of the Government of Galicia, Alfonso Rueda (left), alongside his predecessor in that role, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the current national president of the Popular Party.