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INPRIMATU
Result of the insistence: road signs in Basque
  • The citizen is asking for signs to be put in Basque. The Government responds that this is not required by law. The Observatory replies that, although the law does not oblige, it is not forbidden to place in Basque. The Government maintains its position. However, the population is engaged and the media are pressing. Thus, in some cases, changes occur; in Navarre, signs are also placed in Basque.
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Bide gorriko seinalea gaztelaniaz eta euskaraz, Behatokiak eskaera egin eta gero. Argazkia: Behatokia.

The Behatokia Linguistic Rights Observatory has published the summary of the month of August, as it does every month. Violations of language rights, congratulations and achievements are on the list. There is an achievement that says that in most signs of the road between Pamplona and Zizur Mayor have incorporated the Basque country. One citizen contacted the Observatory. He denounced that there was no Basque in those signs.

This is not the first time that the Centre has received a complaint of this kind, and on the other hand, the response given by the Government of Navarra in these cases is practically the same. The director of the Centre, Agurne Gaubeka, has explained the context to us to see how the Government of Navarra responds to the question of signals. Several articles of Decree 103/2017 were repealed in 2019. One of them said that the signals, warnings, notifications… of the central services of the Government of Navarra should be bilingual. This article was declared null and void by the courts. Thus, using this annulment, the Government responds to the forms of denunciation by the citizen of Zizur, who has no obligation to do so in bilingual. The Centre repeatedly responds that there is no obligation, but there is no prohibition: “The Government can and seems to have to do so, at least they should be bilingual.” In Gaubeka's view, insistence sometimes has consequences. In Zizur’s example, the answer did not promise much change, but the very citizen who denounced the situation has told the Observatory that almost all the signs have become bilingual. In the opinion of Gaubeka, the pressure of the public and the media influences, and that is why: “We appeal to the citizens, sometimes neither in the first, nor in the second… we get it in the third, but we manage to make changes and encourage people to send us pictures [to the Euskera Phone].

The sign is still in Spanish. Photo: Observatory.