Vol.12, No.1 | [Article] Language Policy of Catalonia and Nationalistic Conflict in Spain

This paper describes the language policy undertaken by the central and regional authorities during 1977-2015, a special attention is given to the legal and ideological aspects. There are two team works, dedicated to the language policy of regional administrations of “the Catalan speaking countries” (Boix-Fuster and Milian-Massana 2002; Strubell and Boix-Fuster 2011). As opposed to this article. These include the language policy of not only Catalonia, but only slightly touch upon the policy of central authorities. The role of this policy in the conflict that happened in 2017 is discussed. For this purposes, we will initially present the languages situation in Catalonia by 1975, and the language ideologies, associated with Spanish and Catalonian nationalism issues. Then we will address to the language policy of Catalonia, its evolution and results. The final part presents enhancement of Spanish nationalistic discourse of the People’s Party (Spanish: Partido Popular) in 1990-2000, its consequences in the language policy and initiation of current serious crisis in Catalonia and Spain.


Keyword : Spain, language policy, Catalan, nationalism, multilingualism