The Ombudsman elected by the independentists warns the Generalitat for denying attention in Spanish

Victor Mondelo Barcelona

Barcelona

Updated Wednesday, February 7, 2024-00:01

While

Pedro Sánchez

agrees with

Pere Aragonès

on a law so that any citizen can address the State Administration in Catalan, as the last major concession at the negotiating table, the Generalitat is criticized for denying widespread attention in Spanish to Catalans, causing a evident paradox.

The Ombudsman of Catalonia has requested that the Generalitat modify its website so that "citizens can express their statutorily recognized right of linguistic choice and, therefore, express the language in which they want to interact with the different Departments of the Generalitat." ».

In the petition, to which EL MUNDO has had access, the Ombudsman of Greuges,

Esther Giménez Salinas

, elected by ERC, Junts and the PSC and former member of the CGPJ at the proposal of CiU, adds: "We understand that in this way it would occur coverage of the right of linguistic choice that the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia establishes and the right legally provided for in the language policy law, so that citizens can express to the Administration that they want to receive communications and notifications addressed to them in Spanish ».

The unprecedented warning from the Ombudsman - an institution traditionally aligned with the independence movement on linguistic issues - does not occur ex officio, but after the claim of IA, a citizen who denounced the violation of her right to be attended to in Spanish by the Catalan autonomous administration. .

«It is my right to be written to in the language I want. "I want the language of my country, I am not going against Catalan, I just want all notifications to be sent to me in Spanish, my usual language," the complainant tells this newspaper, while confessing to being "surprised" by the actions of the Ombudsman and distrusts that the Generalitat will comply with her recommendation: "Honestly, I highly doubt it."

«I feel cheated and violated in a way. I pay taxes and they do whatever they want without respecting the law. They don't give a damn what the citizen wants," he exclaims.

The Generalitat hides behind technical issues to explain why it is impossible for a Catalan to request through its website to receive all notifications from the Catalan Administration in Spanish. This is what the Ombudsman emphasizes in her report: "We are informed that it is not yet technologically possible to uniquely manage the language change for all the procedures and services of the Generalitat Administration."

The Government alleges that "the information systems of the different departments do not use citizens' contact data in a centralized manner", making it impossible for a citizen of Catalonia to select the possibility of communicating exclusively in Spanish with the entire autonomous Administration. .

"Work is being done so that in the future a single database can be available, centrally, and this [linguistic] preference can be selected," adds the Generalitat, while the Ombudsman specifies that "we are informed that in these At the moment there is no “implementation schedule” for the measure. This means that comprehensive care in Spanish for the citizens of Catalonia will continue to be violated until further notice despite being legally provided for, while the independence movement urges Sánchez to quickly facilitate care in Catalan throughout the State, demanding that he put pressure on Europe to accept the official status of this regional language or celebrate that in Congress deputies no longer have to use the common language to communicate.

«The policies of pacts between the PSOE and the nationalists make multilingualism unidirectional, it is intended that the State Administration work in all the official languages ​​and, on the other hand, the autonomous administrations implement discriminatory policies in favor of the regional co-official languages ​​with the consent of the Government of the Nation," laments

Pepe Domingo

, president of Impulso Ciudadano and advisor to the citizen who, with her complaint, has provoked the reaction of the Ombudsman.

Domingo considers that "the Government would have to worry about warning the offending administrations and enforcing the regulations" and recalls that "there are many rulings that have annulled linguistic regulations that are contrary to the principle of freedom of linguistic choice and, however, they are not "they comply."

«The Ombudsman's resolution goes in the right direction, but it is a recommendation and the Generalitat systematically ignores these types of recommendations. We would like the Government to take seriously the defense of the linguistic rights of all, including those of Spanish speakers, and to require the Generalitat and other administrations to comply with the Constitution and guarantee their right to freedom of linguistic choice and to be attended to in the common language of all Spaniards," concludes the president of the constitutional entity.