The Vasco-speaking community has suffered violations of language rights during COVID-19, the Governing Council has denounced. In the name of immediacy and priority, and on behalf of the entities of Basque cultural activity, they have been left out.

The institution that brings together the social entities of the Basque Country has called for a shock plan to deal with the crisis, a plan to implement it in the short term. The Council has prepared a number of requests to send them to governments and has gathered the main requests in the phrase “Geroa euskaratik, elkar, elkar zainduz”. Thematic requests can be read in the report. The Council’s objective is not to lay down governments solely on economic damage, but to rethink language policies and to join the keys to a better future.

Sectoral applications

In teaching, they have asked for measures to deepen immersion and maintenance models that guarantee linguistic competence to all students. In non-formal education, in initiatives with children and young people, they have called for linguistic criteria to be prioritized. In addition, they have claimed that adult Euskaldunization is free of charge. They considered it essential to begin to develop a regulation of their own that would make it possible to know and protect the work of creators in Basque. The crisis has highlighted the shortfalls we have in Euskera in technological resources and they will require governments to address these shortfalls.

The Council wishes to take advantage of the crisis as an opportunity and to commit itself to a more democratic, cohesive, egalitarian future with guarantees of rights: “Because we know that every time a fundamental right is excluded, everyone else is weakened.” He has appealed to the social partners to go along this road, “for only by meeting and mutual care will we be able to generate new and more egalitarian linguistic policies”.