Specifically, the Administrative Disputes Chamber of the High Court of Justice, presided over by Judge Luis Garrido, has annulled three articles of Decree 179/2019 on the normalization of the institutional and administrative use of official languages in local entities.

They annul Articles 18.1, 18.2 and 33.5. Consequently, in the areas that address these articles, the door is closed to the use of Euskera, both in internal functioning and in relations with citizens.

Article 18.1 states that: “Calls for organs of local entities, agendas, motions, individual votes, proposals for agreements, opinions of the Information Commissions, agreements, minutes and other municipal documents may be written in Basque, in accordance with the regulations approved by each local entity. When the writing of documents in Basque or Spanish damages the rights of any of the members of the Local Entity and the Local Entity can claim, legally and validly, that it does not understand the language of the documents, they will be provided translated into the other official language".

Article 18.2: "The internal documentation of the City Hall will be generated in one or other official language, Basque or Spanish. Subsequently, however, the linguistic criteria to be taken into account in the practice of notifications and communications to interested parties will apply."

Both articles refer to the internal activity of municipalities. The cancellation of these documents will prevent all these written documents from being made only in Basque, on the understanding that they must be made in the two official languages, Basque and Spanish. In the municipalities dedicated exclusively to the Basque country, the request was met if a citizen requests Spanish.

Miren Segurola, coordinator of the Commonwealth of Basque Municipalities UEMA, has pointed out on several occasions that if the City of UEMA is forced to function in Spanish, given that the majority of the municipalities are small, due to the scarce human and economic resources, they could not do all the internal functioning in both languages.

In addition, following the judgment of the High Court of Justice of 16 October, UEMA and the municipalities expressed their firm intention to continue prioritizing the Basque country. By this ruling, the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country suspended some articles of the decree that develops the municipal law in the matter of Euskera.

The third article cancelled is 33.5, which reads: "The use of language in communication or information communications shall be determined taking into account the degree of mastery of both languages by the addressees". Therefore, if the language in which the citizen operates is not taken into account, notifications will be made in both languages.

The judgment is not final and the Basque Government has 30 days to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Demonstration on 4 November

The Council of Euskalgintza called the citizens for the demonstration on 4 November before the Oldarraldia, under the slogan Euskarak bat. Departure from Euskalduna (Bilbao) at 17:00. The Council has described as aggressive the number of sentences that have recently come against the Basque court. It does not consider them isolated sentences and denounces the growing tendency of the judiciary to limit progressive language policies and to reduce the linguistic rights of citizens.

If you want more information about judicial and political aggression, in the next thick report you have the reflections of the mayors of UEMA, the coordinator and the leaders of the Basque trade unions LAB and ELA.Otro aspect to guarantee the predominance of Spanish