A mother’s testimony before the European Parliament denounces the practices of the Generalitat, teachers and parents’ associations

Ana Moreno‘s sin was to ask for her children to be taught in Spanish as well. From then on, the family suffered harassment from the nationalist media, the Education Department of the Generalitat and the AMPA (the school parent’s association) of the school Gaspar de Portolà, in the town of Balaguer, Lleida.

A journalist from the separatist media Nació Digital reported that a family in the town had dared to question the language immersion model and request education in Spanish for their two very young children. The names of the parents and the children were publicised, and a campaign of harassment and demolition, including publicly harrasing, was launched.

The business run by the parents, an establishment with a restaurant for children’s parties, was targeted, which led to its closure after a few months. And the children, a boy and a girl, were branded by the rest of the parents, some of whom went so far as to recommend that their children not associate with them or play together in the playground.

At the same time, CiU, ERC and the CUP (Catalan political parties), together with the school’s teachers and the AMPA organised a demonstration at the school’s gates with the argument that a family was trying to eradicate Catalan from the school and that because of their request, Spanish would have to be introduced in at least one subject.

Petition endorsed by the TSJC

The parents received all kinds of insults on social networks and in the comments of the media that gave the “exclusive”. The education department of the Generalitat also joined the pressure and urged the parents to withdraw their petition “for the sake of their children”.

The parents’ claim was backed by a ruling of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), which has not been enforced, recognising their right to at least 25% of schooling in Spanish.

More cases

Faced with this situation, the parents decided to change their children’s school. They have sent them to study in Lérida, to a state-subsidised school thirty kilometres from their home, but where, in addition to Catalan, Spanish is also taught. Their story, like that of other parents from Mataró who suffered the same situation at the Escoles Pies Santa Anna school, has been silenced in Catalonia to the point that no media has reported the testimonies of these families before the Committee on Petitions in the European Parliament.

At the request of the Assembly for a Bilingual School (AEB), for which Ana Losada is spokesperson, the families were heard in the European Parliament, where they were able to give an account of the insults, the threats, the pressure from the Generalitat and the failure to comply with the rulings that supported their claims. The testimony of Ana Moreno before the MEPs on 18 March can be seen on Youtube (in Spanish) and is a plea against the totalitarian imposition of language immersion.

In addition to Moreno, Agustín Fernández, the father of the Mataró children, and Ana Losada herself, who has not managed to have her daughter’s right to be taught Spanish recognised despite also having a ruling from the TSJC, explained their situation to MEPs thanks to an initiative by Enrique Calvet, a former UPyD member and member of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.