DAVID VALLS
Linguist and Catalan teacher.
Abstract:
In this article, Catalan linguist David Valls analyses the data from the latest Catalan sociolinguistic survey, published at the beginning of 2025. These are worrying data, exhibiting a continuous decline in the use of Catalan. Mr. Valls analyses the causes and proposes solutions to reverse this situation.
Catalan is still the most widely used stateless language in Europe, the one with the greatest vigour, strength and number of speakers. Even so, the surveys carried out every five years by the Catalan government reflect a worrying downward trend in the habitual use of this language. These surveys are of the self-assessment kind, i.e. they are based on the testimony of the respondent when asked whether or not he or she speaks Catalan, with no way of verifying the veracity of the reply. If they do speak Catalan, there is no way of knowing their level either, and it may be that an affirmative answer conceals a low level of spoken Catalan.
Here are some general data from the survey:
-80.4% of the population say they know how to speak Catalan.
-93.4% say they understand it
-29% have Catalan as their mother tongue (in 2003 it was 43.5%)
-32.6% say they have Catalan as their ‘habitual language’ (in 2003 it was 46%).
The survey reveals that knowledge of Catalan is still high among the population, but its habitual use is declining. It has lost almost 15 percentage units in 22 years. Among the youngest (educated mainly through Catalan), the percentage indicating habitual use of the language is 38%.
The author of the article emphasizes that despite the fact that 80% of the population claims to speak Catalan, only 32% have it as their habitual language. Knowledge of the language does not imply its use. The percentage of those whose mother tongue is Catalan is also declining.
One hundred years ago, at the beginning of the 20th century, Catalan was the mother tongue of 90% of the population of Catalonia. Now it is only 29%. In absolute numbers, the total number of Catalan speakers has hardly grown in 100 years. The number of Spanish-speakers, on the other hand, has increased considerably, as Spanish has gone from being a marginal language in Catalonia to being the language currently known by almost 100% of the population (8 million people).
The demographic factor has undoubtedly influenced the decline of the Catalan language. Hundreds of thousands of emigrants from poor Spain arrived in Catalonia in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of them have not yet integrated linguistically in Catalonia, nor have their children. To this must be added 2 million more emigrants in the last 30 years, mainly from outside Europe. There are not enough Catalan teachers to cater for this vast population. On the other hand, the system of language immersion in Catalan is not being properly applied in schools, and many teachers give classes in Spanish.
Mr. Valls also emphasises that many Catalans have an incorrect attitude towards newcomers, as they address them in Spanish. Many of these immigrants come from countries where Spanish is not spoken, but even so, most Catalans always address them in Spanish. As a result, only 4% of new immigrants claim to be able to speak Catalan.
The centuries of persecution that the Catalan language has suffered have caused a large part of the Catalan population to be linguistically cowed, which is typical of speakers of minoritized languages. Only 5% of the Catalan population say that they always remain faithful to the language, whatever the circumstances.
Among the solutions cited by Mr. Valls to reverse the situation are the following:
-comply with the Catalan immersion system in schools
-regulate the use of Catalan in companies and in the private sector
-to comply with and enforce the laws on signage, cinema, etc., and to make linguistic legislation on other subjects
-Raise awareness among the Catalan-speaking population and put aside linguistic complexes.
-to protect the most Catalan-speaking areas and to extend the number of such areas.
-Make it clear that for Catalan to advance, Spanish must retreat in Catalonia.
The situation is serious and action is urgently needed before it is too late.
The full survey can be found here (in Catalan):
https://llengua.gencat.cat/ca/serveis/dades_i_estudis/dades/enquesta-eulp/2023/index.html