Madrid, Sept 19: Spain’s Parliament is set to allow its national legislators to use the country’s minority languages of Catalan, Basque and Galician in national Parliament for the first time on Tuesday.
The reform of the linguistic policy of Spain’s lower chamber was a demand of Catalan separatist parties to support the appointment of a Socialist as the new Parliamentary Speaker last month following inconclusive national elections in July.
The right to speak languages other than Spanish in the national Parliament is a long-held objective of smaller parties from the regions in Spain’s north that have bilingual populations.
The Parliament will provide simultaneous translation with earpieces for the 350 members of the chamber.
The conservative opposition was against the reform, saying it would make debating more difficult.
Spain’s government is also trying to have Catalan, Basque and Galician recognised as languages that can be used in the European Union.
This support of Spain’s minority languages comes as acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is hoping to cobble together the backing from rationalist and even separatist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country to form a new left-wing government.
Catalan is spoken by around nine million people in Spain’s northeast, its Balearic Islands, as well as a small population in France. Galician is spoken by some two million people in northwestern Spain, while Basque has 750,000 speakers in Spain’s Basque Country and Navarra regions.
Spanish is also known as “castellano” or “Castilian” in Spain for its origins in the Kingdom of Castile. It is spoken throughout the country of 47 million people, including the regions where minority tongues survive.
Spain’s 1978 Constitution recognizes its minority languages as co-official along with Spanish in regions where they are spoken. Their use is common in regional parliaments and town halls. (AP)
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