Efforts to pass a bill on languages have failed once again. Aragon is again far from getting its own Languages Act after PSOE pulled back the bill it meant to present before the Aragonese Parliament. Socialists have decided to withdraw it despite the fact that Marcelino Iglesias, leader of PSOE in the region and himself a native Catalan-speaker, assured in his election manifesto he would promote its approval, and the fact that PSOE officials had promised last week they were to submit the bill in Parliament regardless of their political support.

El Periódico de Aragón newspaper reported last Monday that the Socialists were planning to go ahead with the bill after the Aragonese Party (PAR) refused to support any legislation allowing, for instance, minoritised-language speakers to address official bodies in their native tongue. Both regionalists from PAR and PP (Spanish conservative nationalists) strongly oppose to the idea of Catalan being the spoken language of the easternmost part of Aragon. Against all experts on the matter and academic evidences, both parties have rejected a bill that includes the word Catalan to name such language variety.

PSOE is currently the party holding most seats in the Aragonese Parliament (30 out of 67). PP and PAR hold 23 and 9. The remaining parties -Chunta Aragonesista (CHA, leftist Aragon nationalists) and United Left (EUA)- hold 4 and 1 seats, and are in favour of a more progressive approach to language rights, particularly CHA, which seeks to uphold Catalan and Aragonese on equal footing with Spanish by granting both languages co-official status. However, PSOE has ruled out such possibility, since it is intending to reach consensus on the issue.

Aragonese and Catalan are both acknowledged within the autonomous legislation, but the Languages Act is needed to implement measures regarding language status, their use in public domains and the rights of both language communities.

A campaign has been launched to force the Aragonese government to fulfill the promise of passing the Languages Act. The campaign has the support of Aragonese social, cultural and academic organizations, as well as private individuals.

Picture: Marcelino Iglesias, president of Aragon.

Further information:

• El Periódico de Aragón: El PSOE pospone otra vez el registro de la iniciativa
• ABC: El PSOE toma la iniciativa de la Ley de Lenguas de Aragón ante un PAR reticente
• Purnas: O PSOE torna a fer burro falso con a lei de luengas