He always hoped that his claims would not fall on deaf ears. Dory López has been fighting institutionally for years so that her son has more Spanish in his curriculum but, as she confesses to this newspaper, she has already thrown in the towel. He has done so despite the fact that Justice granted him in July 2023 25% more Spanish for his offspring, and at a decisive moment for the defenders of bilingualism, since foreseeably this year the Constitutional Court (TC) will rule whether the Catalan regulations that stop the application of 25% Spanish in all classrooms in Catalonia are constitutional or not.
«I am sure that nothing will change. The battle is lost at all levels. There is a political strategy that prevents our demand from going forward and no government has done anything during all these years to prevent this situation,” says Dory López.
After neither the public nor the charter school respected the proportion of Spanish endorsed by the courts, this mother from Barcelona has decided to enroll her son in a private center that applies linguistic immersion in English and which is difficult for her. more than 1,000 euros per month. She has done so, as she states, to improve her son’s linguistic competence in “languages that will be really useful to him in the future” and to “preserve him from possible social pressures, which the children of other families who have requested more Spanish, or even those that we ourselves as demanding parents have suffered in recent years. “In addition,” he adds, “it is better to choose immersion in a language that will open more doors for you when you finish your studies than in Catalan.”
«As things are, I don’t want to put my son in the shooting. My duty is to protect him and ensure that he obtains the best possible training,” adds the mother in statements to this newspaper.
Dory López’s fight began at the end of 2020 when, together with her husband, she requested the application of bilingualism for her son, who attended the Emili Juncadella school in Barcelona. The request was not just from this family. López collected signatures at the doors of the educational center. It did so between December 2020 and the end of 2021, between the historic ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which extends 25 percent Spanish to the entire system, and the ratification of this ruling by the Supreme Court (TS). In total, they got 19 signatures.
“We were families united by one goal: for our children to have more Spanish in their curriculum,” explains the mother. After several meetings with the members of the group, the associations We speak Spanish (HE) and Catalan Civic Coexistence (CCC), who advised Dory on her claim, decided to create a chat to inform interested parents about their rights in this regard. It was June 2021, before the summer holidays. School ended and the summer break came. «Classes resumed and I saw that there were no parents left in the chat. “Everyone had unsubscribed,” denounces the affected person.
From that moment on, he also began to see how families to whom that bond united him and with whom he had had a good relationship “they began to ignore me”. Dory is convinced, and some affected families have confirmed this, that the center pressured them to stop demanding more Spanish, and this is what ABC reported in its February 12, 2024 edition.
The situation did not stop Dory López, who continued fighting to increase the presence of Spanish in her son’s curriculum. After the refusal of the Generalitat, he appealed to the courts in 2021 and achieved that proportion for his son in July 2023. It was one of the resolutions issued by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) that were issued since the Catalan Government approved its legal arsenal (Decree-Law 6/2022, of May 30, which establishes the criteria applicable to the preparation, approval, validation and review of the linguistic projects of educational centers, and Law 8/22 on the use and learning of official languages in non-university education) to avoid the application of the December 2020 ruling that It dictates 25 percent of Spanish throughout the educational system.
“They punctured my tire the day after the sentencing”
“The day after they gave my son 25 percent of Spanish, they punctured the tires of my car,” Dory denounces. «Some neighbors saw how two young people went directly to look for my vehicle. In fact, he was the only one whose tires were punctured. “They went after my car,” says the mother. The Generalitat appealed the sentence and last June, the TSJC rejected the appeal and ordered it to bear the costs of the process.
Now, the student, who when his family initiated the claim was in the fifth year of Primary Education, is in the third year of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) at a private institute in Barcelona. The price for her son to “get out of immersion” and “not suffer the pressures resulting from the linguistic conflict” is not “less,” according to the mother. “More than 1,000 euros a month is a high price but we assume it by cutting other expenses because it is the only way to protect our son,” says López.
“Designated and without constitutional protection”
Dory regrets that families like hers have to “be singled out and silenced and at the same time fight without any type of institutional protection to achieve a right that the Constitution recognizes for us.”
From We speak Spanish, Gloria Lakeits president, regrets in statements to ABC that “after a three-year struggle, enduring pressures and denials, and responding to the appeals that the Catalan administration presented to the positive sentences that we were obtaining, it is heartbreaking to see how this family throws away the towel because the State does not defend them.
Lago also warns of the risks for students of immersion in Catalan. “Is sad and intolerable leaving people at the mercy of this system, of this so-called linguistic normalization, of this hydra that discriminates against Spanish-speaking children and that intimidates families who want to defend the linguistic rights of their little ones. Society as a whole should react, something like this would not be tolerated in any other country,” he concludes.
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