Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights in Spain

Abstract

The issue of Spanish linguistic policy is worth examining, not only because a quarter of the population of Spain speaks a minority language, but also because, afier four decades of dictatorship, Spain succeeded in developing a reasonably well functioning system to accommodate its linguistic plurality. The current Constitution links the issue of linguistic minorities to that of the territorial organisation of the administration. Political power is shared between the centre and 17 autonomous communities which retain a significant degree of autonomy in different fields such as - in the case of the bilingual regions where the principle of co-officiality is applied - the teaching of its own language. Although, after 35 years of democratic development, the Spanish State of Autonomies is almost unanimously considered successful, regional politics continue to dominate the Spanish constitutional debate and gain increasing weight on the European Union's agenda also. After a short introduction, the second chapter of this paper traces the historical background of three national minorities - namely, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galícia. Linguistic regulation is covered in the third and fourth chapters on the bases of the current Spanish Constitution and the Laws of Linguistic Normalisation of the three autonomous communities respectively. Finally some comments are offered on the current situation of multilingual Spain.