Current Issues In Language and Society
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Volume: 5 Number: 3 Page: 146–180
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Language, Democracy and Devolution in Catalonia
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Miquel Strubell
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In his paper, Miquel Strubell argues that in Europe in the past few centuries the relationship between democracy and language policy in multilingual countries is very complex; that Catalan has thrived in
democratic periods in which devolution has advanced; that the causes of most of the problems facing Catalan are non-linguistic, so the remedies are also non-linguistic; and that the future of Catalan- even
in Catalonia proper- is insecure, because of its weak demographic base: very low fertility rates, plus constant in-migration from Spanish-speaking Spain, often in a hostile media context. He distinguishes
between the rights of speakers of territorially stable languages and those of immigrant populations, and like Kymlicka argues that the liberal tradition does make allowance for group or minority rights.
Finally, in a situation in which a political dictatorship has been replaced by an economic dictatorship (that of the free market) any demographically weak language needs a firm pro-active policy in order
to survive and thrive.
© Multilingual Matters 1997
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