Josep M. Cervelló has been a professor for years and is now a delegate of the USTEC-STEs union, with over 40% representation in education in Catalonia. He is also a member of Somescola.cat. Som Escola brings together educational institutions and other institutions in favor of the Catalan school.

We have just talked to Cervelló about the mobilizations for the Catalan school (12 September), where more activities were being organised by 26 September. On 12 September, a multitude of people concentrated in the municipalities of their towns and cities to reclaim the Catalan school and reject the judgment of the Supreme Court. Following the denunciation of three families, the courts have ordered the Generalitat to guarantee the right of children to study in both Catalan and Spanish. The Supreme Court, following the instructions of the Supreme Court, granted him a period of two months to execute the arrest warrant. According to Cervelló, “social pressure has led the court to defer order.”

Are they satisfied with the citizens’ response to the judgment?

That of 12 September has been one of the most important hearings in recent years in favour of Catalan, in particular the Catalan school. This means that there is a great social consensus, that is, that the students must be educated in Catalan. In the last almost 30 years the Catalan school has had very good results and there are no pedagogical reasons to change. There are political aspirations to change that school model, but work is being done outside its scope. It is the Parliament of Catalonia that has the power to take a political decision. This minority, on the contrary, is using the judicial route to harm the victim. Clearly, they want to question the education system, they want to create tension where it's not. There are very few cases, but they are very fanatical about this issue. There, they met with an educational community that rejected their attitude and opted for the judicial route to make the decision.

How many complaints have families lodged?

All three complaints have been successful. They're identical, written by the same hand. They say there are 500 more parents against the current system. There are about 1,200,000 students in Catalonia. The fact is that, if we look at the number of people, nobody has firmly questioned the Catalan school, nor the model of immersion, because they are two different things [clarifications on page 44].

What are the main characteristics of the Catalan school?

It's three. The first is the quality of education. After Franco came a democratic school that would speak Catalan as a language of teaching. We are talking about pedagogical renewal, the objective was a quality school, and it was linked to that language.

The second characteristic is being everybody's language. Catalan has to promote social cohesion and coexistence. All students must have the same opportunities, regardless of language. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a great debate about whether the students' mother tongue should be guaranteed or Catalan should be considered as a regular language. Remember that in the decades of 1960-70 a million Andalusians and Extremadura came to our country. It was not about saving the language, too, but above all it was about sharing with the newly arrived languages. Two lines were not created in the educational centers, as in the Valencian Country. If a segregated school had been run the risk of breaking social unity, there would be two peoples in the same territory.

Since then they have had another period of immigration.

That was what I was going to do. We paced with the fathers and mothers: we brought your sons and daughters to the Catalan school and we will turn them into full citizens, they will not discriminate by their origin and their language. All those under the age of 35-40 who came in that period of immigration know Catalan. We have already solved it, we have come up with a much more complex and diverse immigration. Children of all ages come. We have prepared the immersion model for Early Childhood and Primary Education, but we also have children from High School. Many of them go to school for the first time and do not know Catalan or Spanish. It is very important to ensure that these pupils are integrated as quickly as possible.

What is the third characteristic of the Catalan school?

Language is part of the personality. The personality or identities of each student can be added to Catalan, as can the bark of the onion. Students can have a collective personality. The school is the national reception. The school must provide guidelines for the interpretation of society. We say, among other things, that we give the password for the universe of culture and human relations. In Catalonia there is great linguistic complexity and there is always a risk of marginalising certain sectors. It is the responsibility of the School that no one be marginalized by language.

Today, passive bilingualism is very common. Some do it in Spanish and others answer in Catalan, it is common. We were against bilingualism, but ...

The whistle-blowers say that they want the two languages to be used in school, that is to say both languages to be the vehicle language.

The school cannot have a neutral space. It cannot depend on everyone’s taste, “I want in Catalan”, “I in Spanish”. It would be a mistake and make education very difficult. The bilingual school would directly attack Catalan. We are facing a new episode of bilingualism and that has been thanks to the Catalan school. Four out of ten Castilian and Parasitic couples in origin speak Catalan as much or more than in Spanish with their children. These couples will continue to speak Spanish with their parents, but through boys and girls the path from Castilian to Catalan is being opened. This is the success of the school system and the Catalan language model.

The current threats are provoking the consensus reached at that time, social peace and the results obtained by the school. These parents are not concerned about the school results of children, it is not that they think it is better to learn the mother tongue first and then that children can start with Catalan. We are talking about a campaign led by a political party, plus some sectors of the PP little concerned. Of the three denouncing families, two are active militants of Citizens, who have denied any kind of connection with Citizens. We are facing the attack of a very fanatical minority.

What do parents say?

Lately I have passed through many schools and all have the Per sign a country of tots, l’escola in Catalan. Euskera: For a nation for all, in the Catalan school]. At the school gates, television journalists were interviewing their parents [refers to September 12], many of them spoke in Spanish: “We need a school that works in Catalan, I want my son to have as many opportunities as any other Catalan.” In Catalonia we have had a positive experience with Catalan, it is not a language of conflict, it is not a language of social distinction.

What are you going to do with the sentence on the table?

The judgment cannot be imposed without the breakdown of our society. We have asked the Generalitat not to comply with the judgment. We know that the Generalitat has a very hard time breaking the law. But make use of your lawyers, of political pressure, etc. To make sure the education system that nothing is going to change. We have told teachers and fathers and mothers that if we are forced to comply with the law we are not going to comply with the order, we are not going to turn the school into a social and linguistic classification. Where it is done, there have been no good results.

For example ...

In Aragon there are about 80,000 Catalan speakers, who have no right to language. After attending Secondary Education, they go to the institutes that are in Catalan lands, as they have not studied Catalan in Aragonese schools. In the Valencian Country there is also not enough offer to learn Catalan and more than 100,000 families have asked to study their children in Catalan. However, here three families are exerting excessive political pressure to change the education system.

The system has created a model that guarantees social unity, school success and also Spanish learning. We are not going to change the system that is successful.

You say that Spanish is a model that guarantees learning.

My children learned Spanish at the Catalan school. Spanish is the first language in many areas and no one can say that he has never heard of Spanish. Instead, when I was a teacher in a neighborhood outside Barcelona, I met children who didn't know Catalan. We are told that in the Pyrenees there are children who do not know Spanish. Let these children teach us, it's a story! It is impossible! Even in the most isolated villages of the Pyrenees, which spend the winter under the snow, television comes. There's no one who doesn't know Spanish, if it's not newcomer.

Once Compulsory Secondary Education has been completed, both languages have to be mastered. Is that the case?

The studies indicate that, once the educational system is over, the Catalans speak Spanish as the Spaniards of Burgos. On the contrary, the Spanish educational system has no way of resolving the linguistic ignorance of the students of Burgos or Valladolid, that is, to learn other languages of the State.