The Ombudsman will investigate the Generalitat for the survey in which teachers in Catalonia were asked about their linguistic uses in the private sphere. With the survey -revealed by EL MUNDO last February- it was intended to find out if the teachers of the Frederic Mompou Institute, based in the Barcelona town of Sant Vicenç dels Horts, used Catalan in situations unrelated to their educational work, that is, in conversations with your family or friends, when shopping or using your mobile phone.
After receiving a complaint from the Free Teachers Association, which ensures neutrality in teaching, Ángel Gabilondo has decided to “request information from the Department of Education of the Generalitat in order to proceed with a more in-depth study on the matter.”
The complainant entity stressed before the Ombudsman that the survey “clearly transcends the educational and pedagogical field and enters fully into the private and personal sphere” and maintained that, in its opinion, “it violates the fundamental rights to privacy and freedom, at the same time that it constitutes harassment and direct pressure on professionals by their immediate hierarchical superiors». “If we add to this the level of ideologization of the linguistic issue in Catalonia, it is also a direct interference in the political rights and freedoms of the workers surveyed,” he concluded.
«With my family, I usually talk in…», «with friends I usually interact in…», «when I buy in commercial establishments I do it in…», are some of the questions that were asked. The teachers faced each other, who had to clarify whether they use “only Catalan”, “only Spanish”, “more Catalan than Spanish”, “more Spanish than Catalan” or “both languages equally”. The center was also interested in the language in which the members of its faculty have “configured the mobile phone and the APPs” or “in which language they address the administration (town hall, local police or civil guard, courts…) ».
«The educational centers that prepare these unacceptable surveys are the antennas of the Department of Education and are part of the Catalan promotion plan designed by the Government of the Generalitat to linguistically profile teachers, coerce them and eradicate the use of Spanish in educational centers », considers the president of free teachers, Professor Carlos Silva.
The teacher maintains that he is aware that similar surveys are being distributed in other centers where the so-called driving groups for Linguistic Uses in the Educational Field (ULAE) have been created, a plan by the Generalitat to certify the strict use of immersion in all schools in Catalonia after detecting a presumed decrease in its use in schools.
«I have no doubt that the Generalitat will use its usual victimist discourse and deploy its fake repertoire of false good intentions to avoid the interest of the Ombudsman, but the perception of evidence by the latter is too big an accusing finger to be ignored. “, considers.
Anna Simó, the new Minister of Education, who was sentenced for promoting disconnection laws in Parliament, must clarify to Gabilondo the objective of the survey.