Plataforma per la Llengua has submitted a petition to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Spain over the decision to exclude organisations defending Catalan from the judicial procedure that ended up imposing 25% teaching in Spanish in Catalan classrooms. The petition has been presented after all the legal channels offered by Spain have been exhausted, as this July the Constitutional Court (TC) also rejected Plataforma per la Llengua's appeal. The organisation considers that Spain has breached three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights: Article 14 that prohibits discrimination; Article 6.1, which establishes the right to a fair trial; and Article 13, which guarantees effective remedy.

This July, the Constitutional Court (TC) refused to accept for consideration Plataforma per la Llengua's appeal to prevent entities that defend Catalan being excluded from the judicial process that imposed 25% teaching in Spanish in Catalan classrooms. The appeal was made against the decision of the Supreme Court (TS), which confirmed the TSJC's decision to exclude all organisations attempting to challenge the interlocutory order from the legal proceedings. The TSJC did, however, admit two organisations defending the Spanish language as interested parties: Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe (Assembly for Bilingual Education) and Hablamos Español (Let's Speak Spanish).

For Plataforma per la Llengua, the TSJC's decision was completely irregular, and the excuse it gave for not accepting the organisation as an interested party was particularly ridiculous, as the court claimed the case was concerned with the use of Spanish, not Catalan, as a teaching language, when it is clear that using more of one of the languages means using less of the other, as pointed out by the two judges in the proceedings who voted against the decision. The Catalan charity claims that the denial of its right to appear in the judicial proceedings is contrary to Article 13 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This article establishes that any person who has seen their rights and freedoms recognised in the convention violated has the right to an effective remedy before a State body, even if the violation was committed by people exercising official functions. Refusal of their right to be heard prevents the organisations defending Catalan from enjoying the right to effective remedy and effective judicial protection from judges and courts, and to obtain an impartial and reasoned judgement.

With its exclusion from the judicial process, Plataforma per la Llengua was also denied the chance to defend its position on the implementation of the decision, issued following a petition by the Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe. It should be borne in mind that the principle of contradiction is basic to procedural law, and that there cannot be judicial proceedings in which only one of the parties is accepted. That is why the organisation considers that it has not received equal treatment in these judicial proceedings and that, to conceal the discrimination, the court avoided resolving all requests to appear in the proceedings in the same decision, opting for two different resolutions depending on whether the organisations were in favour of or opposed to introducing Spanish as a teaching language.

For Plataforma per la Llengua, the different applications of the law based on this criterion breach Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that "the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in the convention shall be secured without discrimination on any ground", particularly for reasons of language, belonging to a national minority or any other similar situation. In this case, the Court also rejected the organisation's right to appear because of the procedural position it felt it was defending, even though Plataforma per la Llengua did not even have the opportunity to express that position in the judicial proceedings.

Aguayo's key vote broke the deadlock and excluded organisations defending Catalan from the proceedings

Plataforma per la Llengua recalls that the decision to exclude organisations defending Catalan from the case was not unanimous. Of the five members of the TSJC, two voted against it, using the same argument as that put forward by the organisation. However, the key tiebreaker vote that excluded the organisations defending Catalan from this judicial process was that of Judge Javier Aguayo, president of the TSJC's administrative litigation division. The organisation claims that the intervention of this judge in the case has violated the basic principles of defence because, in December 2020, a series of rules on the composition of the TSJC's divisions and courts were approved just a day before the decision was issued. These allowed Aguayo's irregular assignment to the case. Specifically, the judge was able to choose to intervene in the case.

This breaches a fundamental legal principle in Western democracies and is contrary to Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which establishes the right to a fair trial and specifies that "everyone is entitled to a fair  and public hearing [...] by an independent  and impartial tribunal established by law". For Plataforma per la Llengua, Aguayo's irregular participation does not meet the guarantees of constitutional law, and for this reason the 2020 ruling that imposed the minimum of 25% teaching in Spanish in Catalan schools should immediately be quashed. 

Chronology of the case imposing 25% teaching in Spanish in Catalan schools  

In May 2022, Plataforma per la Llengua promoted a common judicial front of organisations defending Catalan in schools, which, first of all, wanted to appear in the judicial process to be able to challenge the interlocutory order of the TSJC. This interlocutory order, issued following a petition from Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe to apply the sentence of 25% teaching in Spanish, obliged the Catalan government to send instructions to schools to enforce it. According to the text, any family could be considered an interested party in the case because they sent their children to school, and, as the ruling was issued in the context of a general lawsuit affecting the entire system and not a single school, the implementation of public policies within the power of the authorities is left to individual families

The TSJC decided not to admit the organisations defending Catalan as interested parties, but it did accept Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe and Hablamos Español. Plataforma per la Llengua could not, therefore, even take a position on the implementation of the decision. The TSJC, however, went ahead and required the then Catalan Education Minister, Josep González-Cambray, to give instructions within a fortnight so that at least one core subject should be taught in Spanish, and to establish guarantees to enforce this. The Catalan executive ultimately approved a law on languages in schools that did not define Spanish as a teaching language but rather as a curricular language, and a decree law that rejected percentages in language teaching and established that the Department of Education had sole legal responsibility for schools' language policies. The Catalan government used these two legislative developments to inform the TSJC that its decision could not be enforced because the new legal framework prevented its implementation. The TSJC then questioned the constitutionality of the new regulations with the Constitutional Court, which has yet to rule on the legal validity of both the law and the decree law.

Appeal to challenge the court that provisionally suspended the language system decree

In addition, although this May the Department of Education promoted another decree (on language in the education system) to govern the use of Catalan in schools while rolling out Title II of the Catalan Education Act (LEC), this July the TSJC also imposed a precautionary suspension following an appeal by Asamblea por una Escuela Bilingüe. To prevent its suspension, Plataforma per la Llengua presented an appeal for reinstatement and, in parallel, a statement of opposition against the lawsuit presented by the Spanish organisation. It also submitted another petition for the recusal of Judge Javier Aguayo and the entire court for having again participated in the case in an irregular manner, for overstepping their powers and anticipating what the decision should resolve, and because Javier Aguayo had made partisan statements to visiting MEPs, such as claiming that "citizens cannot be required to be heroes for exercising their rights and asking for 25% teaching in Spanish". However, at the beginning of October, the TSJC refused to accept the recusal for consideration (although it should have been evaluated by another division). Plataforma per la Llengua has now filed an appeal for reinstatement in the same court. If this is also not accepted for consideration, the organisation will apply for the court's actions to be quashed, and, if necessary, take the case to the Constitutional Court and the European justice system.