ELEN had a large delegation at the UN Universal Periodic Review on Spain held this week at the UN in Geneva. The ELEN Report to the UPR makes a range of recommendations to Spain for better protection for Catalan, Basque and Galician, including revoking the Rovira Law in Valencia, stopping the legal attacks against the Catalan immersion model, eliminating the zoning system imposed on Basque in Navarre, stopping the legal campaign against Basque, and ensuring that citizens can use Galician in healthcare, the administration and the legal system in Galicia.
On Tuesday ELEN held a successful official side-event with A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística (represented by Marcos Maceira and Elsa Quintas), Plataforma per la Llengua (represented by Marga Payola), and Kontseilua (represented by Manex Mantxola), to inform state parties about the issues raised in the ELEN UPR Report.
At the meeting ELEN made six main recommendations:
1) To revoke with immediate effect the “Rovira Law” in Valencia, a law deliberately designed to undermine the use of Valencian in education.
2) To take measures to stop the ongoing legal campaign against the Catalan immersion model.
3) To ensure Basque language rights with regards to Basque language use in healthcare, public administration and the legal system, to increase the amount of Basque language media production, and to ensure full official status in all of Navarre and eliminate the zoning system imposed on Basque.
4) To ensure Galician language rights with regards to Galician language use in healthcare, public administration and the legal system, and to increase the amount of Galician language media production.
5) Grant official status for Asturian and Aragonese.
6) Ensure full EU official status for Catalan, Basque and Galician.
Concluding the side-event ELEN Secretary-General, Davyth Hicks, underlined the failure of the EU to establish clear, binding, unambiguous language rights for European minoritized languages, and that “it is absurd that ELEN and its member organizations, as European citizens, have to come to the UN to ensure protection for our languages.”
The UPR review of Spain’s performance in human rights was held on Wednesday April 30th, where Xavier Antich and Elena Jimenez from Omnium Cultural joined the delegation, with many State Parties supporting recommendations for better protection of Catalan, Basque, Galician, Asturian and Aragonese. The final recommendations will be published on May 2nd. To follow up ELEN and its member organisations will participate at the July Human Rights Council where the UPR outcomes will be discussed in the presence of States.
ELEN members Omnium Cultural and CIEMEN also issued reports on the political conflict and the amnesty law and spyware being used against NGOs and politicians. These were also supported by several state parties at the UPR who called on Spain to ensure that it upholds the freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly.
The ELEN delegation also took the opportunity to meet with UN Special Rapporteur for Minorities, Nicolas Levrat, with who the organization has a close working relationship. The ELEN delegation discussed the future joint strategy on securing substantive protection for our languages in Europe, a strategy that will be further developed at the ELEN General Assembly in November, as well as current language issues in France. The meeting was also an opportunity for Plataforma per la Llengua, Omnium Cultural and A Mesa to present the range of ongoing issues facing Catalan, Basque, and Galician discussed in the ELEN Report to the UPR, and on the effective use of the UN Treaties for language protection.
The ELEN Report was compiled jointly with A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística, Plataforma per la Llengua, Omnium Cultural, Kontseilua, Accio Cultural Pais Valencia, Obra Cultural Balear, and Iniciativa pola Asturianu. (Eurolang 2025)
ELEN Report to the UPR on Spain