There has been about 38 years of gradual decline in the use of Catalan in Barcelona because a municipal government decided to create a specific space within the city council to promote it. Gairebé, four decades since 1989, the Municipal Services Survey began to ask what was the usual language of citizens. A question to which, however, 49% answered that Catalan; ia the quality, whatever happens, each time many people respond the same way: here only 35%. Meanwhile, the Spanish language has remained stable at a rate of 50%.
I have run out of money with the Commissioner of Social Services of Catalonia – as indicated in the Quad in a column by Rudolf Ortega, to which I responded for both -, but it will appear that in passing there is still a little more because he returned to Barcelona: it would be irresponsible to feed populism with someone who was so transcendent. Globalization is beginning to concentrate speakers in a few major languages and threatens linguistic diversity: the emergency situation is not exclusive to Catalan, the extinction of the linguistic ecosystem affects, like the climate crisis, the entire planet.
There are many new linguistic policies, which respond to the new reality, so complex, and which focus on those which will work to bring Catalan back into the public space after the 40 years of repression of the dictatorship, at a time when the defense of the compatible language was a consensus more universal than that of people who speak in the usual way. A consensus that we must recover values the role of Catalan as an eina of social cohesion and equal opportunities, as well as the two arguments concerning linguistic rights.
Caldran anys of linguistic policies also municipal, which in Barcelona generated just five months. But above all, so as not to remain only in lamentation and the accumulation of negative data, with the recent results of the Territorialized Survey on the Linguistic Uses of the Population (EULP), which will not be published until November, come from a 2023 survey – the things that follow, this could give us data in the face of problems. Why does this give rise to the insistence on the negative diagnoses that paralyze them – he shouts here, as Ferran Palau would say –, the one that shows what is happening.
What actions have we started to take towards Barcelona? To start, build a structure. Create the Catalan Office, a specific sector of municipal administration, in order to maintain the linguistic sensitivity of those who will govern the city in the future, respect for the rights of Catalans and the promotion of their own language. The Catalan Language Council of Barcelona will depend on a system of citizen participation in training processes, on a sectoral forum that will monitor why the municipal promotion of Catalan has the continuity it needs, on a laboratory of its own linguistic policies that will be able to approve the first municipal language plan
The new line will also depend on the general call for subsidies from the municipality, aimed at promoting Catalan in training and education countries, as well as in the digital world. Two adjustments which overlap with our new projects aimed at increasing the use of Catalan among young people. On the one hand, the collaboration agreement between the town hall and the Institute of Catalan Studies, intended to intervene in linguistic uses in the field of educational and sports reading, to give resources to the staff who will have to monitor why Catalan has followed the vehicular language in these countries, and who will share a campaign to promote the use of the language by aspiration. In addition, the House of Digital Creation in Català, which together with Accent Obert, the CCMA, Betevé and Barcelona Activa vol combat the abandonment of the language among young people, refers to the creation of contingut in Català which demonstrates that we have a language at the service of social capital of envelopes.
In addition, the Catalan Office must act in matters of commerce and restoration, which allows a change in the urban landscape, with greater visibility of Catalonia in this privileged showcase that is Barcelona, which must act as the capital of Catalonia and be the greatest ambassador of its careers. But if you are ready to sort it out, you are always in dialogue with the sectors and with the competent sectors of the town hall. I have tried to convince that Catalan is an ally to stand out and build loyalty among local customers, with the aim of respecting regulations. Civic centers, neighborhood centers, sports centers… the list of shipping costs for Casa Gran and the six delegations that in the name of Català – knock, knock – were clicked during these first five months to exhaust the space available for this article. Here with the institutions, entities, associations and companies in which we engage in activism in favor of language, and in which we share concerns, ideas, proposals and, above all, a desire for interest.
Despite the soroll eixordador to xarxes and destructive criticism – so much bo all the almogàvers with little empress feina in the time they allocate to theroll infinite of the voluntary languages of CPNL, Òmnium or CAL–, the majority sensitivity is that we work together to reverse the emergency situation or that we can withdraw. There has been about 38 years of gradual decline in the use of Catalan in Barcelona because a municipal government decided to create a specific space within the city council to promote it. Ara que per fiens hi hem posat, que no no posi pals a los rodeos. Also in Catalan, it contributes or puts aside.
Marta Salicrú Serra She is the Catalan social commissioner of Barcelona City Hall.
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