Alfonso Rueda has decided to carpet the meeting of his Minister of Culture and Language with the opposition parties to, in theory, rebuild the consensus on Galician with a return to the ultra clichés about the co-official language of the community. As if the Popular Party, which unilaterally broke the agreements, had not been governing and dictating policies for 15 consecutive years that have led to the latest data provided by the Galician Institute of Statistics: 32% of children between 5 and 14 years old do not know speak Galician, twice as much as in 2009. The president of the Xunta attacked the dangers of an alleged imposition and went so far as to relate teaching in co-official languages with poor academic performance. Specifically, linguistic immersion, which even the Council of Europe disfigured the Galician Government.
The example used by Rueda was Catalan, and for this he referred to a document from the Spanish Journal of Pedagogy which, he said, linked linguistic immersion in Catalonia with a decrease of 21 points in academic performance. “Here we have a 23-point difference in favor of the academic performance of the boys and girls who go to school in Galicia,” he responded to Ana Pontón, leader of the BNG, who had asked about the matter in the parliamentary control session, “I will fight to avoid what you want, to look good with your partners [en referencia al independentismo catalán] and equalize below in school performance with linguistic immersion.”
Rueda’s PP has headed the Xunta since 2009, and in its first term – Feijóo was the president – it decreed the first setback in the teaching of Galician in schools, with opinion against the entire educational community, the opposition and the institutions. most important cultures. Alfonso Rueda himself attended a demonstration against Galician in 2007 along with ultra-Spanish sectors. Ponto reminded him. “It started behind a banner against Galician and has ended up voting against Galician in this Parliament,” said the nationalist. The popular ones opposed in Congress, the Senate and also in the Galician Chamber the co-official languages being used in state institutions.
The report of the Spanish Journal of Pedagogy about the teaching in Catalan that Rueda adhered to contrasts with all the reports, figures and statements from specialized organizations about Galician that he preferred to ignore. From the Council of Europe to the Royal Galician Academy, from the latest Enquisa Estrutural dos Fogares of the IGE to the studies of the Consello da Cultura Galega, all agree in showing a decline in the use and knowledge of the community’s co-official language. Pontón did mention them, which earned him the disqualifications of the Galician president: catastrophist, denialist, bitterness. And no self-criticism, despite his 15 years in successive PP cabinets, since 2022 as its head. “Any president would be alarmed with these data about the Galician, but you prefer to look for culprits, immigrants, social networks or the IGE,” said the opposition leader.
Rueda reaffirmed his point at immigration. “There are 115,000 foreign people who have come to Galicia, 25,000 children, who are not Galician speakers and we must attract them to the language. It is not the only cause, but it is one,” he said, just before accusing her of “nationalist dogmatism.” But Pontón’s argument had gone in another direction, which the president did not enter into: “He is robbing the youngest of their freedom and their right to speak in Galician.” And faced with the litany of cordial bilingualism that the PP has been repeating for decades, she asked him where the 50% of Galician is in justice, where in healthcare, where in movie theater premieres, where in teaching. Rueda did not respond. Nor whether this Thursday’s meeting with councilor José López Campos will mean recovering the General Plan for Linguistic Normalization, approved by parliamentary unanimity in 2004 and whose consensus the PP blew up in 2007 under the direction of Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Alfonso Rueda.
“Gray and unambitious budgets”
Previously, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, spokesperson and general secretary of the Socialist Party, had completed his turn in the control session with an assessment of the Xunta’s Orzamantos for 2024. “They are gray and unambitious,” he said, and criticized the forecasts of growth managed by the Galician Government, below the state average. The item dedicated to paying the debt, 1.7 billion euros, was also the subject of discussion. “He neither wants nor is interested in debt forgiveness,” accused Besteiro, who regretted that public money allocated to linguistic normalization is below 1%. The Galician president chose to repeat his rhetoric of recent days about the “conservative and realistic” accounts, and to use the Madrid argument against the PSdeG – “they make fun of Mr. 1”, “we are not interested in amnesty” – , a match that, in his opinion, should be “much more important.”
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