The European Language Equality Network will be holding an official side-event with member organisations – Plataforma per la Llengua (Catalonia), Kontseilua (Basque Country) and A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística (Galicia) – on April 29th at the UN in Geneva to discuss the Report to the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) the day before Spain is put under examination on April 30th.
ELEN and its member organisations (Omnium Cultural, Plataforma per la Llengua, Kontseilua, A Mesa, Acció Cultural del País Valencià, and Obra Cultural Balear, Iniciativa pola Asturianu) compiled a Report at the end of 2024 detailing the various language rights contraventions and ongoing attacks affecting the official languages Catalan, Basque and Galician, as well as the non-official languages Asturian and Aragonese. The report is published here: https://elen.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ELEN-UPR-Report-2024-Spain.pdf
The Universal Periodic Review is a mechanism of the UN Human Rights Council in which states evaluate each other to analyze a State’s degree of compliance with human rights. NGOs participate in the process by submitting reports to State Parties on the human rights performance of the state under review.
For Catalan the Report notes the legal campaign being conducted against the Catalan immersion model of education, a system that has been successful for decades, that enjoys huge public support in Catalonia, and which is designed to ensure that children are fully bilingual in Catalan and Spanish, as well as being vital to ensuring social cohesion in the country.
Despite measures put in place by the Catalan Government to protect the model, there has been an ongoing campaign conducted by a small amount of Spanish-speaking parents aiming to have 25% of classes in Spanish, therefore undermining the immersion model. The most recent ruling of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), condemned by ELEN and its Catalan members, has annulled four sections of the instructions that the Department of Education sent to Catalan schools for the 2022-2023 academic year that did not explicitly include Spanish as the vehicular language and language of habitual use in schools.
For Valencian the Report examines various problems, in particular the current Valencian Government’s Rovira Law which is deliberately designed to drastically reduce the presence of Valencian in schools. Campaigners have underlined that because the Law undermines Valencian it contravenes the 1982 statute of autonomy and is therefore unconstitutional. In the Report ELEN calls for the Rovira Law to be revoked with immediate effect.
Various issues continue to affect Basque, in particular the use of the language with the public administration, healthcare services, and judiciary. Despite Basque being an official language in Euskadi and parts of Navarre, Basque citizens continue to face problems using their language with these public services. This situation has worsened in recent years due to an increasing legal offensive against measures aimed at the normalization and revitalization of the Basque language. In Navarre, the lack of official status for Basque across the entire territory further undermines the rights of Basque-speaking citizens.
Similarly for Galician, A Mesa underline the difficulties for Galician speakers to use the public administration, healthcare services and judiciary in their language, as well as the lack of Galician media for children. The Report also calls for Asturian and Aragonese to be given official status and more support for their language recovery.
The ELEN Report also calls on the Spanish Government to continue in its efforts to make Catalan, Basque and Galician full EU official languages.
Speaking to the press ELEN Secretary-General, Davyth Hicks, said that: “Spain needs to urgently address the various problems facing Catalan, Basque, Galician. While we very much welcome the efforts of the Spanish Government to make these three languages EU official, we also need to see some progress on the ground and action taken as recommended in our Report. At the ELEN side event we will discuss the ongoing legal attacks against the Catalan immersion model, the ridiculous Rovira law designed to undermine Valencian, the range of problems faced by Galician and Basque speakers in using their language with the administration, healthcare and in the legal system. The three languages are all official yet continue to be undermined. We also call for progress with Asturian and Aragonese, both of which would benefit from official status.”
The ELEN side-event will be held at 13.00 in the UN Palais des Nations on Tuesday 29th April in Room XXII. (Eurolang 2025)
ELEN UPR Side-Event List of Speakers
Marcos Maceira, President, A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística. ELEN Vice-President (Galicia).
Elsa Quintas Alborés, Vice-President, A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística.(Galicia).
Marga Payola, International Co-ordinator Plataforma per la Llengua, ELEN Vice-President (Catalonia).
Manex Mantxola Urrarte, Co-ordinator, Euskalgintzaren Kontseilua (Basque Country).
Davyth Hicks, ELEN Secretary-General. (Moderator)
ELEN Report to the UPR: https://elen.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ELEN-UPR-Report-2024-Spain.pdf
UN UPR home page: https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/upr-home