Following the demonstration convened last Saturday by the Council of Euskalgintza before the Oldarraldia, together with the Basque Country, under the slogan “Euskaraz bat bat bat”, as representative of the Observatory on Linguistic Rights, I should like to make some observations public.

We are talking about linguistic rights and the normalisation of Euskera when we say that we must face aggression, but we are also talking about the dignity of people, equality and the language of minority peoples and their peoples. It may seem like a small thing to say or claim that we have the right to live in Euskera, which is a whim, but beyond what we have been led to believe, there is a reality that fundamentally refers to linguistic, cultural and popular oppression.

Through the gradation of citizens' rights, the staggering of languages is also carried out, setting in motion different instruments to affirm that Euskera cannot be on the same level as Castilian. And that is where we place the current aggression, to the extent that we are asking and executing advances and legal protection in the CAV and in Navarra, we are built with great walls for the definitive hegemony of Spanish or French, strong limitations to not go beyond the current sociolinguistic reality.

When we talk about aggression against the Basque Country, we obviously talk about direct and indirect aggression. In Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa, for example, we know that there has been no judgment against Euskera because the French Constitution itself has a lock that does not accept any other language than French, but do the obstacles and limitations of the teaching of Euskera or its associates not go against the normalisation of Euskera? Is that not aggression either?

Many sections of the population do not want the normalization of Euskera, because when we talk about judicial aggression we are not talking only about decisions by some judges. The various actors, individuals and professionals in society have sought in the courts the legitimization of their ideas and the defense of their individual interests, something that should not go too far to see that it is composed of well-coordinated systematic actions.

On the other hand, without resorting directly to these usual speeches, other excuses have been sought. Among other issues, it is worrying to continue to extend to society the perception that citizens who do not have the Basque knowledge are discriminated in access to public administration. In fact, some have wanted to focus on the accreditation system, but as if there was full equality between the hegemonic language and the situations of the Basque Country.

The lack of requirement for Basque certificates in the current situation, or the gradual reduction of them, would mean fewer instruments guaranteeing linguistic rights. The current level of accreditation is the one approved in Europe for languages, and if we have to review that it cannot harm services in Basque.

Of course, public resources must be provided to offer more Basque to those who have had the least, but that cannot blur the obligations of public posts, because personal interests or rights are not above the rights of citizens and of collective well-being. Finally, I should like to focus this aggression on the various public institutions, namely the Euskera Public Entity, the Government of Navarra and the Basque Government.

Beyond judicial aggression, other day-to-day decisions also condition or limit language rights and the normalization of the Basque Country, whether they are different standards (for example, that there is no desire to impose official status throughout Navarre or that in the law of consumers and users of the CAV language rights have an increasingly reduced space), or fewer measures to guarantee linguistic rights.

* Agurne Gaubeka is Director of the Linguistic Rights Observatory