Doing As They Are Told? Subregional Language Policies in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Wales

Abstract

This article analyses efforts by subregional government to plan for and implement language policy (LP). It aims to show that this governance level is key to a more nuanced understanding of the locations within which language policies are created, brought to fruition and evaluated. With this in mind, data from six subregional authorities in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, the Autonomous Community of Catalonia and Wales are employed. Additionally, from the particularity of each region and subregional authority, these data are applied more generally to analyse party political support for LP activity as well as LP interaction across governance tiers. This paper discusses the extent to which regional governments' legislative and fiscal support (or relative lack of support) for overall LP objectives influences, restricts or otherwise engages subregional government LP activity. Understanding the relationship between the first two objectives will help to link local empirical data with the third objective—that of beginning to unravel the role that non-statewide nationalist and regional branches of statewide political parties play as LP facilitators at both subregional and regional level. Party activity in LP is subsequently interpreted as a measure through which to emphasize the values of (often overlapping) identity and solidarity patterns.

Keywords:

• Wales
• Basque Country
• Catalonia
• language
• local politics

Notes

These are, in the Basque Country, Gipuzkoa Provincial Council (GPC) and Bizkaia Provincial Council (BPC); in Catalonia, the municipalities of Manresa and Santa Coloma de Gramenet (SCG); and in Wales, Gwynedd Council and the Isle of Anglesey County Council (ACC).

Given the particularity of each case study area as well as the multiple subregional levels of government, the election criteria for the case studies were threefold: multi-functionality of service provision; population size in receipt of subregional provision (>60 000); census percentage stating knowledge of the non-statewide language (>20%).

Although statistics for 1981 show knowledge of Welsh at 63% for Gwynedd (Jones, 2012) and knowledge of Catalan at 50.3% for SCG (Government of Catalonia, 2012), the percentage level of use of Catalan is much lower than the corresponding usage level in Gwynedd. This would suggest that demolinguistic factors are not the only ones at play when making LP decisions.

All interview translations are my own.

As a precursor to implementation of the bilingual units, between 1992 and 1996, 400 staff—approximately a quarter of the GPC workforce—were released for this purpose on full pay with replacement staff taking their positions for periods of up to two years (interview with language promotion directorate officer, GPC).

Part I of the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 provides for the official status of the Welsh Language.

It could be argued that the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 provides for such a territorial development, for example at 44(2).

This figure (£340 000) is derived from adding translation requirements to the posts of internal language trainer and language officer.