The Official College of Architects of the Basque Country (EHAEO) has filed a special appeal against the documents that regulate the hiring file for the drafting of the General Urban Planning Plan (HAPO) of San Sebastian. The appeal concerns a number of issues, including language requirements.

In particular, he says that not all jobs with a C1 level Basque language requirement will have a relationship with the population and, therefore, it is excessive to make this linguistic requirement to jobs that will not be exposed to the public, precisely to the coordinating working groups. In this way, the College only considers the public attention that is offered to the citizens; however, if the coordination personnel do not have this level of Basque, the allegations and writings that are presented in pure Basque during the drafting process of the HAPO must be translated by other colleagues.

The EHAEO states in its appeal: “Not all profiles that are required to speak Basque at the C1 level will have contact with the population (and if they have it, they can do it together with other bilingual staff).” The College considers this requirement to be a “restriction on free competition”. For this reason, it calls for a “modification” of the files of the file, “reducing technical and/or professional solvency”.

Likewise, “as a precautionary measure”, the College requests that the procedure of the hiring file be “suspended”. Precisely because the Administrative Body on Contractual Appeals of the Basque Country has informed the City Council of the request of the College, the City Council has decided to “withdraw the contracting file that is the object of the contract of services necessary for the drafting of the General Plan of Urban Planning of San Sebastián (Exp. 2024/058. Number in the United States ), Approved by the Local Government Commission on December 3, 2024”, as explained in an official communiqué of the city council of December 16.

The Judicial Assault

For the time being, this action has not been taken by the courts, but it must be framed in the context of the anti-Basque aggression that has been going on lately. In fact, in recent months, several judgments have been issued against the Basque language requirements of various public administration positions, violating the linguistic rights of Basques.