The umbrella organization Queremos Galego, made up of hundreds of associations, institutions and groups from the Galician civil society have travelled to Brussels to denounce Galician president Alberto Núñez Feijóo's language policies, in power since April 2009. Queremos Galego, which promoted a crowded demonstration in favour of Galician language last October, believes the Xunta (Galician government) is implementing active and aggressive policies to "dismantle" the language normalization process.

The organization visited the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the UNESCO headquarters. Their officials also met with members of the European Parliament belonging to minoritised communities such as Oriol Junqueras (ERC, Catalan Countries), and the Intergroup for Traditional National Minorities, Constitutional Regions and Regional Languages. The initiative has been led by Carlos Callón, president of A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística (Bureau for linguistic normalisation); Anxo Louzao, national secretary of the trade union CIG (Education section); Bieito Lobeira, member of the Galician parliament for BNG (Galician Nationalist Bloc) and the actress Isabel Risco.

According to Queremos Galego, Feijóo's government violates the Galician Language Normalization Act and the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages. Representatives of the umbrella organization handed out to officials from the Council of Europe a document pointing at the most flagrant infringements of the Charter.

Anxo Louzao stated that the Popular Party (PP) is encouraging "the castilianisation of Galician society" with the aim of "dissolving any trace of diversity which could lead to a plurinational and multilingual Spain", Vieros online journal reports.

One of the most controversial measures the Galician president seeks to introduce is the reduction of Galician language in schoolrooms in favour of English, a project that would shrink Galician to one third. Queremos Galego has pointed out that the proposal is not feasible due to the lack of teachers in English and that it will invariably lead to more hours of Castilian.

Photo: Queremos Galego.

Further information:

• Queremos Galego website.
  
• A Nosa Terra: Queremos Galego denuncia a política da Xunta na UE
• Carlos Callón a GaliciaHoxe.com: En castellano no hay problema

See the Galicia profile and the dossier Peoples and nations today: Galicia for further information.