At the September session of the 60th UN Human Rights Council held in Geneva, Spain adopted several recommendations from different states made under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) on protecting minoritized languages.
It marks a breakthrough by having a State, Spain in this case, adopt specific recommendations on language minorities and is thanks to the team effort and consistent advocacy work conducted by ELEN and its member organizations, A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística, Kontseilua, Òmnium Cultural, Plataforma per la Llengua, Obra Cultural Balear, Acció Cultural del País Valencià, CIEMEN and Iniciativa pol Asturianu, over a long period of time.
In 2024, as the Review of Spain commenced, ELEN submitted its joint report to the UPR on Spain highlighting the various issues regarding minoritized languages. This was followed up by lobbying various supportive states to make recommendations to support Catalan, Basque, Galician and Asturian.
In April when Spain came up for the Review the ELEN delegation was in Geneva where it hosted an official side-event on language issues in Spain as well as intensive lobbying of numerous UN member states to support measures to protect these languages. At the meeting four states made recommendations to Spain to protect its minoritized languages – Ireland, Austria, Samoa and the Marshall Islands.
The delegation also met with UN Special Rapporteur for Minorities, Nicolas Levrat, to discuss issues in Spain and to develop a substantive minoritised language protection mechanism with the EU, a topic that will be featured at this year’s ELEN General Assembly in November.
The final part of the UPR process was held at September’s meeting of the Human Rights Council where Spain adopted the recommendations made by the four states for its minoritized languages, the first time this has happened in the UPR process regarding Spain.
In his speech at the September UN HRC meeting the Plataforma per la Llengua President Oscar Escuder called on Spain to “implement the recommendations without delay.”
Speaking to the media ELEN Secretary-General Davyth Hicks said that: ”We’re obviously pleased that our long term advocacy work and team effort is beginning to deliver results and, as we plan ahead for future UPRs and UN HRC work, we’ll be working to get the recommendations on Spain implemented and to get more UN member states to support substantive protection for minoritized, endangered and indigenous languages globally.
“Our next step will be to get UN member states like France to take measures to protect the minoritised languages on its territories, as well as getting the EU itself to live up to its obligation to protect our languages. Its also important to emphasise that the teamwork and long-term support from our NGOs helped us to achieve these results, as well as showing how important it is that we work together for our languages.” (Eurolang 2025)
ELEN report to UN UPR on Spain 2024
UPR Working Group Report on Spain with State recommendations June 2025