I do not understand why the opposition Partido Popular insists on trying to make political capital out of the issue of Catalan/Majorcan. This was an issue which I thought was settled a decade ago but there are some within the centre right party who want to tap into the discontent felt by some towards the Catalan language. For those who are unaware, Catalan/Majorcan is the language of politics: all council meetings, parliamentary sessions, etc. in the Balearics are in this language. In fact, if you don't speak it there is little point attending a council meeting. It is also the language of the civil service, and the majority of schooling in state schools is in Catalan. After much debate more than a decade ago the language issue appeared to have been resolved.
Speaking the language
Palma13/05/2018 00:00
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Absolutely nothing Madrid (central government) can do about it. They transferred everything to do with Health and Education, lock, stock and barrel to the local government here as well as to other Spanish regions. Are your friends complaining that there aren’t enough Spanish people teaching English or English speaking people teaching English ?
I agree with all comments. The health service bias is a national disgrace (ok, regional but Madrid should clamp down). Re education, equally a disgrace. The additional shame is that even with private education there are few if any native speakers teaching English. My Spanish friends complain about this all the time.
Apropos to this, it would be worthwhile reading about how the new Catalan president, Sr Torra, has referred to Spaniards who do not speak Catalan. Pigs and mentally retarded are some of the more polite ones.
Then you can imagine what happens to people from the mainland and immigrants from South America who have to keep their mouths shut as they need to earn an income. The same thing has happened to me as an adult, but mainly because I have a foreign surname.
There is a great deal of racism happening in the schools and the after school sport activities. A foreign child will be overlooked for a Mallorquin child. It is happened in the last two months in a competition here where a child had won and then should have gone forward to represent the squad. The judges got together afterwards and the mother was called to say that her daughter could not compete as the opportunity would be given to another girl, who happened to be Mallorquin.My nieces in schools had books thrown at them and shouted at as their Catalan accent was not correct. One teacher in the junior school, we complained to the headmistress, she said that she was fully aware of the problem but she was unable to do anything.The Mallorquins are happy for their children and the children of the island to be given far less worldwide opportunities by the narrow mindedness of the Catalan language to be dominant.
More Catalanazification.
So they choose not to have the best medical minds to work in their health service.Surely to cure a person it should not be related to language.
Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world,Catalan,by comparison is spoken by only a few,which language is the most useful to speak.?
Maybe Franco wasn’t so wrong after all.
We left Mallorca because our children were discriminated against by teachers because they spoke some spanish and english. We are not tourists, we are mallorqueans! The education system is basically saying that we have no right to exist! We want equality for spanish speakers in my part of spain! Then we can come home! Mallorca does not belong exclusively to the mallorqueans who choose to speak mallorquean - it belong to everyone. I am mallorquean, I am spanish, I am english, I am british and I am a legitimate human being with the right to speak spanish at home! EQUALITY FOR SPANISH SPEAKERS IS A RIGHT!