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Those are some of the issues highlighted by Filling the Sink listeners, Catalan News readers and attendees at Barcelona International Community Day, who tell us the good, the bad, and the funny side of moving to Catalonia from abroad. Last month, the administration of Pedro Sánchez attempted to placate the Catalan Republican Left party – which heads the regional government – by proposing that at least 6% of streaming platforms’ content would have to be in Spain’s co-official languages: Catalan, Galician or Basque.The Mediterranean climate, good food, beaches, not to mention excellent health care and public transport: what’s not to like about living in Catalonia? Well, how about high rents, low salaries, and hellish bureaucracy? Language issues have also featured in the central government’s efforts to get next year’s budget through parliament. It said it would no longer allow “twisted separatism to continue assaulting the little boy and his family from Canet with total impunity”. The far-right Vox party, whose rise has been partly fuelled by the Catalan independence crisis, has called a demonstration outside the regional parliament on Tuesday evening. Pablo Casado, the leader of the rightwing People’s party – which is leading the national polls but has just three MPs in the 135-seat Catalan parliament – said: “Today in Spain, we’re suffering a terrible case of linguistic segregation involving a five-year-old boy.”Ĭasado said the Catalan government was practising “linguistic apartheid” and accused the Socialist-led minority government of “complicit silence” because it relies on the support of some Catalan nationalists in congress. The Spanish right has seized on the episode as proof of anti-Spanish discrimination in Catalonia, where the separatist government attempted unilateral secession in 2017. “This doesn’t go against Catalan it’s about complying with rulings, and the still guarantees Catalan as the educational centre of gravity in Catalonia,” Illa said on Thursday. Salvador Illa, a former central government minister who now leads the Catalan Socialist party, also criticised the attacks on the family and said schools need to obey the decisions made by courts. If we don’t react, they’ll kill our language.”Īt the end of last week, the Catalan high court ordered the regional education ministry and the head of the school in the town of Canet de Mar to take measures to protect the boy and his identity.ĭuring a visit to the school last Thursday, Josep Gonzàlez-Cambray, who serves as education minister in the pro-independence regional government – said he condemned “any kind of threats or violence”.īut he criticised the Catalan high court’s decision to order that 25% of classes be taught on Spanish as “an intolerable attack”, adding: “The Catalan school model is a model of success, which guarantees us social cohesion, equity and equal opportunities.”įernando Grande-Marlaska, the interior minister in Spain’s Socialist-led coalition government, has warned that “any threats to coexistence” will be investigated. One person tweeted that their house should be stoned, while another called for the little boy to be shunned, adding: “The other children should leave their class when lessons are taught in Spanish. The family’s actions have provoked an angry response from some Catalan nationalists who view their stance as an assault on the region’s language and culture.Īccording to media reports, the family became the subject of a WhatsApp group that has suggested identifying the child and his parents. The long-running and bitter row over language teaching in Catalonia has intensified after a family in the Spanish region was harassed and abused for seeking to ensure that a quarter of the lessons at the school their five-year-old son attends are taught in Spanish.