Parliament of Catalonia. Wikimedia. Public domain.
Irene Rigau is not easily intimidated. Her mammoth task consists of maintaining the hard-won status of the Catalan language in Catalonia’s schools. Attacks on it are sustained. The last firing squad used words as sharp as bullets; they missed the target, but not by much: the shaken education minister Rigau even managed to shoot back in the corridors of Barcelona’s autonomous parliament: the tone of her reply spoke volumes about her determination. She’s really fighting tooth and nail. Let’s have a look at the whole story.
The court rulings: less Catalan, more Spanish
The Generalitat (Catalonia’s autonomous government) has been more than once reprimanded by judges for ignoring their rulings. It perseveres instead in its policy of obligatory Catalan language immersion in all schools across the region without paying any attention to the courts who say this practice must be avoided.
