Joan Ridao, lecturer at the University of Barcelona, has published an article in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press) on multilingualism in the public authorities of Spain. Among the conclusions, he points out the scarce presence and promotion of linguistic diversity by the central government.The article states: "It has been noted that there is a lack of state legislation to ensure that all people can interact with full legal validity and effectiveness with central state bodies or common state institutions in the official language of their choice". The author adds that, although the Spanish Constitution includes a mandate to protect the linguistic wealth of Spain, this precept "has never been given special attention by the legislator or by the public authorities in general; in fact, there is little presence and promotion of linguistic diversity at the state level".
The text also stresses that the linguistic model of the Spanish Constitution is asymmetrical, as it considers Spanish as a "lingua franca" and as a "tool to create a bond of political union". "There is no recognition of multilingualism in all public spheres, as there is in Belgium, Canada or Switzerland", says Ridao. One specific aspect of this asymmetry is that the Constitution establishes the duty to know Spanish, but this is not the case for the other co-official languages.
The author emphasizes the role played by the Constitutional Court. Ridao notes that this court "had initially defended the preferential use of Catalan in the public administrations of Catalonia in order to 'reduce the monopolizing preference that the legal system and its interpretation and application give to the Spanish language'". However, later, in the 2010 Statute Judgment, the Constitutional Court declared that this preferential use of Catalan would entail "the primacy of one language over the other [...] to the detriment of the inexcusable balance between the two equally official languages, which in no case can have privileged treatment". "This position of the high court is at the origin of all the linguistic conflicts that have followed in the field of education since 2011", says Ridao.
The possible solutions suggested in Joan Ridao's article are the reform of Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution, on the languages of Spain, or else an expansion of the Constitution so that Spain would be oriented towards a system of national languages that would "make effective" the dual-official-language regime.
