Books in a school classroom. QUIM PUIG.

Last July, the Supreme Court of Spain declared that all signs in Catalan public schools – referring to different departments, courses and toilets – must be in Spanish as well as Catalan. As pointed out on Xavier Grasset’s chat show ’La Selva’ on TV3, this means that the word ’Aula’ (classroom) would have to be accompanied by the word ’Aula’, as the two are identical in both languages. ’Història’ would have to lose an accent in order to be displayed in Spanish: ’Historia’. ’Horari’ (timetable) would gain an ’o’: ’Horario’; and so on. All this, despite the fact that by law the Catalan government has total responsibility for public education: if it wanted to put its school signs in Scottish Gaelic or Hawaiian, it would be entitled to do so. But the problem, as always, is that it puts them in Catalan. Aside from the politically linguistic aspect of the........

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