Plataforma per la Llengua is working so that, on 30 April, as part of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review (UPR), States around the world call on Spain to guarantee Catalan-speakers' language rights. In October, the organisation prepared a report that lists the violations of these rights in Spain, and, in recent months, it has met representatives of several States to ensure they accept Plataforma per la Llengua's recommendations to guarantee language rights. To strengthen its campaign, this February the organisation promoted a joint manifesto with more than 20 bodies from Catalan-speaking territories to demand guarantees from Spain over all human rights: civil, political, cultural and socio-economic rights as well as those concerning language. 

Plataforma per la Llengua has identified the six most urgent language rights recommendations it wants to be made to Spain. First of all, Spain should take measures to prosecute language discrimination by public servants. It should also include the Catalan-speaking minority as a protected group under the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. It should comply with the recommendations of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Minorities; and it should approve legislation to recognise the rights of speakers of official languages other than Spanish. The aim is that speakers of these languages could use them with workers in the general State administration and the judiciary. In particular, Spain should amend Article 231 of the Judicial System Act (LOPJ), which establishes that in judicial proceedings civil servants must use Spanish, and that "co-official minority languages" will only be allowed if no party objects. Plataforma per la Llengua also recommends that Spain should take measures to ensure children can be educated in Catalan, and that hate speech against Catalan-speakers and the Catalan language, particularly on the Internet, should be investigated, prosecuted and punished.

Plataforma per la Llengua's international team passed these recommendations on to the States that attended the pre-session organised by UPR Info, which took place at the UN headquarters in Geneva on 21 February. The organisation subsequently set out in depth the violations of linguistic rights in Spain in several bilateral meetings with State delegations. The aim is for States to accept the organisation's recommendations and include them in the reports and statements they make when they assess other countries in terms of human rights as part of the UPR. This is the mechanism by which UN States assess each other every four and a half years to analyse their level of respect for human rights. 

In the report Plataforma per la Llengua has sent the States, it recalls that Spain favours Spanish and relegates Catalan in the rules for applying for public subsidies; that Catalan-speakers perceive Spanish justice as hostile; and that maintaining language immersion in education is necessary so that children from Spanish-speaking environments can learn Catalan properly. The organisation has also analysed the requirements for public employees in the general State administration assigned to Catalan-speaking territories and has found that no level of Catalan is required in any job, and that a certain level of Catalan is valued as a merit in only 2.16% of jobs in Catalonia, 1.75% of those in the Balearic Islands, and 2.05% of those in the Valencian region. 

Spain has failed to comply with the recommendations made by other States in the last review 

Although they have considerable symbolic value, the recommendations States make to other countries as part of the UPR are not binding. In fact, Spain has failed to comply with the following recommendations that it committed itself to implementing following the last review in 2020: to eliminate all forms of discrimination and combat hate speech, xenophobia and racial discrimination; to strengthen measures to combat discrimination against language minorities; to adopt a comprehensive law against hate crimes, with assistance, protection and compensation to victims; and to develop laws and policies to punish and prevent hate crimes and discrimination while promoting respect for diversity. 

Event prior to the Universal Periodic Review session in Spain 

The day before the UPR session, on Tuesday, 29 April, Plataforma per la Llengua will take part in an event sponsored by the European Language Equality Network (ELEN) at the United Nations' headquarters in Geneva: the Palais des Nations. The organisation will present the main recommendations of its report at an event where other organisations in the network, such as A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística and Euskalgintzaren Kontseilua will also speak, with the participation of the secretary general of ELEN, Davyth Hicks.