Marc Guevara, operational head of the Education and Universities section for Plataforma per la Llengua, shares details of the judicial and political persecution of Catalan in schools in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Valencian region with representatives of language minorities from all over Europe

This sixth annual meeting was useful for finding out about the education system for the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland and for sharing challenges and good practices in primary schools for speakers of minority languages  More info about "We condemn the persecution of Catalan in schools at a meeting of the education group of the European FUEN network in Finland"

This campaign aims at helping and guiding companies so that they comply with current regulations and become linguistically responsible

In 2023, Plataforma per la Llengua managed to get more than forty companies to include Catalan language in their activity

[CATALAN VERSION HERE] More info about ""El català és negoci" adds English language to help foreign companies adapt to language regulations"

The draft report prepared by the Committee on Petitions, following the visit of MEPs to Barcelona to evaluate the language immersion programme, spreads misleading arguments against Catalan language schools.

Plataforma per la Llengua is concerned that the Committee on Petitions, despite being outside its remit, is using public resources to make recommendations for the expansion of the use of Spanish and is embracing the lies of Spanish nationalism.

The entity regards as very serious the declarations made by Jesús María Barrientos, who stated that the families who have taken immersion to court suffer "harassment" and are victims of "xenophobia" 

The Committee on Petitions wants to send the report to the Constitutional Court to encourage it to take a position against the law proposed by the Generalitat that sought to circumvent the 25% compulsory use of Spanish in the classroom More info about "The committee chaired by Dolors Montserrat in the European Parliament promotes the views of Spanish nationalists against immersion following the visit of MEPs"

Plataforma per la Llengua, together with other organisations advocating for the Catalan language, met on the 15th and 16th of January in Barcelona with the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (CEDM) to analyse the Spanish State's compliance with the commitments it ratified in 2001

The main topics discussed were the lack of use of Catalan in the justice system, the linguistic rights of Catalan speakers when dealing with public administrations, and the setbacks in the use of Catalan in Valencian and Catalan schools

The Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe has already received a fifty-page report, coordinated by Plataforma per la Llengua, detailing all the violations committed by the ECRML in recent years  More info about "Plataforma per la Llengua meets with the Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages"

The UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues has called on the Spanish State to make a statement on the compatibility of the decisions of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia with international law, the human rights instruments ratified by the state, and the limitations imposed on the language immersion model.

Fernand de Varennes called on the Spanish government to respond within 60 days, but now that the deadline has passed, there is no record of any response from the state. Any response will have to be sent to the new rapporteur, the Swiss Nicolas Levrat.

This is the response of the United Nations to seven organisations, among them Plataforma per la Llengua. These organisations have come together to inform the rapporteur of the legal campaign to impose Spanish as the lingua franca of the Catalan education system. More info about "UN expresses concern about the situation of Catalan in schools and calls for a review of the rulings against immersion made by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia"

Plataforma per la Lengua has released a legal report with the participation of EU law professors from King's College London and the University of Birmingham

Academics Karen McAuliffe and Takis Tridimas have criticised the EU Council's restrictive position in 2004 on a request to grant Catalan semi-official status.

The report analyses the main points surrounding the legal issue and warns of the negative consequences of a hypothetical unfavourable response

The organisation will meet with the first of several embassies in Madrid tomorrow to present its report More info about "An international legal report confirms the legality of making Catalan official in the EU"

Òscar-Adrià Ibàñez, head of the International Affairs, and Language Rights and Public Authorities departments at Platform per la Llengua, asked the UN special rapporteur for Minorities, Nicolas Levrat, to intervene to guarantee the language rights of Catalan-speakers at health centres 

The organisation's representative pointed out that the use of Catalan with doctors has fallen in Catalonia from 47% to 39% in the last 15 years and that the health care system is the area where most language discrimination is recorded in Catalonia, the Valencian region and the Balearic Islands 

According to research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), dealing with patients in their own language improves their medical prognosis   More info about "We ask the UN to work to protect health care patients' right to be dealt with in Catalan"

The organisation considers that Spain has the capacity to resolve the doubts of other States between now and the date of the next General Affairs Council, and has repeated that it holds the Spanish government responsible for the success or failure of the vote

The Catalan NGO positively values the "gradual deployment" system proposed today by the Spanish delegation if this makes it possible for the other States to agree

And the organisation recalls that Catalan is a language spoken by millions of Europeans that has enough professionals working with it so that the effects of official status can be rolled out quickly More info about "Plataforma per la Llengua considers it essential that the vote to decide whether Catalan becomes an official EU language is held on 24 October"

Organisations affiliated to Civil Pledge for Official Status for Catalan repeat that whether the language becomes official has real consequences in many areas of the country, and they call on the Spanish government to convince EU Member States to obtain the necessary unanimity

The organisations promoting the commitment, which have already signed the manifesto "Official Status, Now!" in February, call on more associations to support the text. They celebrate the fact that the Spanish government has been pushed into formally requesting official status, as they demanded in February

The organisations welcome the step taken by the Spanish government to propose amending Article 1 of Regulation 1/1958 to add Catalan to the list of the current 24 official languages, and warn that, given that the opportunity to achieve this now is unique, they will not settle for less More info about "Organisations promoting Catalan hold the Spanish government responsible for the official decision taken by the EU Council on 19 September"

Òscar-Adrià Ibàñez, head of language rights at the Catalan NGO, attends the 67^th Congress of the Federal Union of European National Communities (FUEN), one of the main organisations protecting minority nationalities and languages

The request of the FUEN Assembly of Delegates for Catalan speakers to be recognised as a linguistic minority in the Spanish State seeks to give the speakers more rights and greater international protection, and the inhabitants of the Franja de Ponent could particularly benefit from it More info about "The European FUEN network urges Spain to recognise and protect Catalan speakers as a language minority"