The co-official languages in Congress, a nod to nationalism that already foundered a year ago

The use of the co-official languages in the two Chambers that make up Parliament has been for years a kind of whiting that bit its tail. In the midst of negotiations with the pro-independence parties to gain their support and compose the new Congress Table, as well as to explore the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz reversed this Wednesday a specific proposal that already foundered in 2022. Today, however, the context is different..

And this nod to the Catalan and Basque formations, especially Junts and ERC, comes after the proposal by Carles Puigdemont's party to extend the use of Galician, Basque, Catalan and Valencian in the Senate was left in borage water with the dissolution of the Cortes. And just when the acting coalition government tries to limit this negotiation to the economic terrain, trying to silence the demand of the Catalan nationalists for a referendum on self-determination.

In Díaz's party, which today claimed the “important” role of the leader of the commons Jaume Asens to bring positions closer to former president Puigdemont, they did not want to clarify whether the proposal came from the Catalan coalition. They limited themselves to affirming that they pursue the same thing as a proposal presented by the Plural, ERC and PNV groups, to reform the Regulation: allow the use of the co-official languages during plenary sessions, in the commissions and in the written initiatives presented by the parties in the registry. Unidas Podemos also supported this reform.

For now, PP sources assure that they will vote against it again, considering it a new “cession” to the independence movement, which is not even included in the PSOE program. Strictly, the Sumar program does not specify anything about the reform of the Regulations of the Lower House that they are proposing today, but the majority that want to arm would guarantee them the absolute majority necessary to promote these changes. As long as the PSOE gives the green light.

Specifically, Díaz's party proposes to revive the reform of article 6 of the Regulation, to allow their lordships to express themselves in the official languages of their communities of origin, also contemplating the simultaneous interpretation of these languages to “give visibility to plurality linguistics of our country”. They make no mention of costs.. The Junts proposal in the Senate would mean spending 950,000 euros per year on interpreters, according to the estimate provided by this party when it registered this initiative, in 2021. That same year, with the norm then in force, which only allowed the use of these languages in highly valued cases, the Upper House allocated 355,000 euros of its budgets to cover these items..

The ball would remain in the hands of the PSOE, the same group that already voted together with PP, Vox and Ciudadanos against this initiative.. A year ago, the then parliamentary spokesman and today acting Minister of Industry and Commerce, Héctor Gómez, announced his group's rejection of this initiative before even putting it to a vote.. He affirmed that it is in the Senate where “aspects of an autonomous community, of a territorial nature, are dealt with”, but also “sensitivities in all areas”. The same party that agreed to ERC's demand to force audiovisual platforms such as Netflix to allocate 15 million a year to production in Catalan and other co-official languages, in exchange for their support for the budgets for 2022.

It is also the party that endorsed the processing of the Junts proposal in the Upper House, to later request the extension of the term for amendments on dozens of occasions, in the face of criticism from the Catalan separatists of their “parliamentary filibustering”.. This Wednesday, neither in Ferraz nor in the socialist parliamentary group wanted to assess Díaz's proposal, which will remain on the siding without their support.

The controversy comes from afar. According to the EFE Agency, in 2004 Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya obtained the support of the PSOE to be able to use the mother tongue of parliamentarians in brief interventions, which they would later translate into Spanish.. A year later, the then ERC deputy, Joan Tardá, was expelled from the speaker's rostrum by the president of the Chamber, the socialist Manuel Marín, for not translating into Spanish the speech he had just made in Catalan.

In the Senate, despite being the Chamber of territorial representation, they can only be used for 12 years, and only in the debate of motions. Even the dialogue table between the central government and the Catalan Generalitat has addressed the revision of the Regulations of the Upper House to favor the use of official languages. And, like so many other times, the idea that Díaz rescues today ended up stored in a drawer.. Another thing is that the PSOE, which today needs the votes of ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV and BNG to revalidate the coalition Executive, give a new 180 degree turn. So far, no one has wanted to rule it out.