Tablas y Gráficas del Experimento 1

In 1980, the results of the first elections to the Catalan Parliament were to have crucial consequences for the institutional structuring of the Generalitat, setting an unexpected path that shaped and conditioned later developments to a considerable extent. PSC and PSUC emerged as the dominant forces in Catalonia in the first two rounds of general elections held in 1977 and 1979. Hence, PSC, although its campaign had been punctuated by a series of minor incidents between its Catalanist and more Madrid-inclined wings, could reasonably expect a large victory and the privilege of setting up autonomous institutions. Pujol’s narrow victory came as a surprise for most, and a rude awakening for an excessively confident PSC. In 1984, in the second Autonomous elections, CiU obtained an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament and became the dominant political force until 2003.

137

Table 6: Election results to the Catalan parliament (1980-1999)

Source: My own compilation from the official site of the Generalitat, www.gencat.cat

PSC's relatively low score in 1980 can partly be attributed to the fierce competition on the political space of the left. The Andalusian nationalist party PSA obtained close to 3% of the immigrant vote and PSUC was still remarkably strong, while ERC was able to attract 9% of the Catalanist vote. But the reason why the Catalan electorate has consistently voted for PSC-PSOE at general elections where CiU has been the most successful party in autonomous elections lies in what has been referred to as a differentiated turnout (Riba 2001). On the one hand, while political participation in general elections has matched the state-wide average, turnout for Catalan elections has been lower. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of those who abstain from voting in Catalan elections are PSC voters and internal immigrants in particular. For instance, 34% of immigrants who voted for PSC at the 1979 general elections abstained in 1980, a pattern which repeated itself over subsequent elections (Colomé 1996: 18).

This creates an asymmetric pattern, whereby the interests of active Catalan speakers,

Year 1980 1984 1988 1992 1995 1999

Parties % Seats % Seats % Seats % Seats % Seats % Seats

UCD 10.1 18

AP 7.7 11 7.7 6

PPC 5.97 7 13.1 17 11.9 12

PSC 22.4 33 30.1 41 30.1 42 27.6 40 24.9 34 37.9 52

CiU 27.8 43 46.8 72 46.8 69 46.2 70 41 60 37.7 56

PSU

C 18.8 25 5.58 6

IV 7.76 9

IcV 6.5 7 9.71 11 2.51 3

ERC 8.9 14 4.41 5 4.41 6 7.96 11 9.49 13 8.67 12

PSA 2.66 2

138 who constitute CiU’s core electorate, are over-represented by comparison with youth and immigrants, who predominantly support PSC and tend not to vote.

However, the ambivalent position of PSC along the centre-periphery axis constitutes a crucial difference between Catalonia and the Basque Country, where the PSOE federation, although it took the name of PSE – Partido Socialista de Euskadi – to polish its Basque credentials, is much more oriented towards Madrid, and the degree of polarization along the centre-periphery cleavage more pronounced. The PSC was founded in 1978 out of the fusion of three existing parties: Congrés, PSC-Reagrupament and the Catalan federation of PSOE. The first two were autochthonous parties, created a few years earlier out of the fusion of dispersed organizations operating exclusively within Catalonia with strong nationalist leanings. Unlike all other Spanish Autonomous communities where socialist parties were incorporated into the PSOE, the PSC was the only party federated with the Spanish socialists at state level (Colomé 1989). According to its 1978 Statutes, the PSC is both committed to “create a classless, self-managed and socialist society, in which all signs of class and national oppression have vanished”, and to “assert the national personality of Catalonia.”¹²⁸ This ambiguous position has fed a constant tension with the PSOE. Well aware that they pay a high electoral price for tolerating the PSOE's rejection of genuine federalism, the Catalan Socialists have pressed for regional power to be fully developed under the existing Constitution (Gillespie 1992: 8). In addition, these tensions are not only visible externally, between PSOE and PSC, but also internally, between native Catalans and immigrants within the PSC: “In Catalonia, the continuous tensions between the historical members of the Catalan federation of PSOE and the former leaders of PSC mirrored the basic tensions existing between native Catalans and immigrants. The federal structure of the party only partly managed to regulate the ongoing conflicts between the centre and the periphery.”¹²⁹ The PSC was allegedly a “party of professionals and intellectuals with Catalanist backgrounds from the lower and middle bourgeoisie, while the Catalan federation of PSOE was the “party that overwhelmingly receives the votes of immigrants from other parts of Spain,” well-entrenched in the Barcelona outskirts with a more traditional working class identity (Jacobson 2010: 75).

But these tensions have been managed within the party itself.

128. Estatuts del Partit Socialista de 1978, Art. 1.

129. Gunther et al. quoted in Gabriel Colomé (1989) p. 80.

139 Ultimately, the PSC took over the role formerly played by PSUC during the pre-transition period, which the latter was no longer able to fulfil as a result of its inexorable electoral decline. By appealing to working class interests and avoiding positioning itself clearly along the centre-periphery axis, the PSC has been able to bring a large number of internal immigrants into Catalan politics. Far from confining itself to being the ‘party of immigrants’, it actively sought to cultivate its Catalanist identity. In regard to the linguistic conflict, it acted as a moderator by seeking both a consensus with CiU and carefully preventing it from becoming a salient membership boundary.

4.3.2. ‘Linguistic normalization’ and PSC’s moderating role

The linguistic provision in the 1978 Constitution was sufficiently vague to leave significant scope for interpretation. The inherent tension of the constitution, between the indissoluble unity of the Spanish state and the recognition of its nationalities, is also embedded in article 3, which states that “Castilian is the official language of the state;

all Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it”, and yet specifies that “the other languages of Spain shall also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities.” The 1979 Statute enshrined an equally vague provision. In fact, the Catalan language, relegated to menestralia during the dictatorship, was relatively weak, including among natives. Besides, the virtual absence of institutions able to rapidly regain the ground that had been lost in the past forty years meant that nationalists had a vested interest in drafting a disposition that would remain ambiguous enough to be accepted by the majority of the electorate and leave sufficient room for later interpretations, according to the political conjuncture. The linguistic provision comprises three elements¹³⁰. The first one consecrates Catalan as the “lengua propria”

of Catalonia, following the proposition made by PSC and PSUC of resurrecting the idiom used in the 1932 Statute. This presented the advantage of stressing the symbolic significance of Catalan, by contrast with the somehow impersonal “language of the state.” The second one establishes Catalan as Catalonia’s official language, as is

“Castilian which is official in the whole of the Spanish state.” While seemingly putting both languages on an equal footing, it formalized the right of citizens to speak Catalan,

130. Estatut d’Autonomia de Catalunya de 1979, art. 3.

140 as opposed to their right and duty to speak Castilian, a formal inequality that has remained contentious until today. The third one guarantees the normal and official use of both languages, by “taking the necessary measures to ensure that they are known, and creating the right conditions for them to become fully equal in terms of the rights and duties of the citizens of Catalonia.” Hence, to the great satisfaction of nationalists, the third disposition gave the Generalitat a blueprint to privilege the use of Catalan, which, at this stage, was relatively disadvantaged and could not be equalized with Castilian without massive public intervention.

The Constitution has allowed for the development of two distinct models of education in bilingual autonomous communities. The first one is the so-called model of partial or

‘total separation’, applied in the Basque Country, Navarra and Valencia and based on individuals’ right to choose the language of instruction. By contrast, the model of

‘linguistic conjunction’, based on the principle of non-separation, is meant to ensure that all students become proficient in both languages by the end of the period of compulsory education (Huguet 2004). By constraining individuals’ ability to choose their preferred option, the system is necessarily more conflictive. Catalonia is, with the partial exception of Galicia, the only Community that opted for the second option. As the system is mainly the result of administrative practices and decrees left at the discretion of the executive, it can potentially be modified without major legislative reforms and is consequently more subject to political changes. However, after 23 years of CiU leadership, the model is solidly anchored in stable institutions. The main source of inspiration of policy-makers was the Carte de la langue française, the infamous bill 101 adopted by the Québec Assembly in 1977, meant to turn the French language into the dominant vernacular of education. But unlike in Québec where nationalists have been forced to recognize the historic rights of Anglo-Quebeckers, effectively protecting their linguistic rights as well as those of immigrants who already integrated the Anglo-Québec community (Magnet 1990: 5-9), the legal framework in Catalonia has remained much more ambiguous.

Catalanist parties agreed on minimal parameters. First, the linguistic conflict should not be used for an electoral purpose. Second, all students should become proficient in both languages by the end of the period of compulsory education. However, within these broadly defined parameters, there were important disagreements across parties in regard

141 to the long-term aims and the means to achieve them. The first objective seemed especially far-fetched as the debate was being appropriated by civil society associations.

One of the first actions taken by the newly elected CiU government in 1980 was to pass a decree making Catalan the normal vehicle of expression in all the administrative organs affiliated to the Generalitat¹³¹. This disposition has successively been expanded, so that access to the civil service rapidly became conditional upon an applicant’s ability to speak Catalan¹³². In order to be eligible for entry in the Catalan administration, applicants must provide a certificate delivered by the Junta Permanente del Catalan officially sanctioning their linguistic abilities. The selection procedure is regulated by a competitive examination and the accreditation of candidates’ linguistic skills, independently of their examination results. The autonomous administration generates directly around 5% of the jobs on the Catalan labour market and immigrants from the rest of Spain were largely excluded from the public administration in the 1980s (Alarcon 2005: 64). For CiU, this early disposition presented the advantage of giving privileged access to individuals who were proficient in Catalan in the early-1980s and hence were more likely to share the Generalitat’s nation-building agenda, while encouraging non-Catalan speakers to learn it. With a civil service by and large sympathetic to its aims and financially dependent upon it, the CiU-led Generalitat found reliable support for its ‘Recatalanization strategy’.

This decision prompted the publication of the Manifesto de los 2,500, denouncing the discrimination suffered by Castilian speakers and defending the right to receive education in one’s mother tongue¹³³. This group was mainly constituted of pre-transition civil servants from the Department of Education, who rightly feared that the new linguistic regulations might endanger their position. At the same time, the Crida a la Solidaritat was founded in defence of the “Catalan language, culture and nation”¹³⁴, and

131. This decision was in fact the realization of a long-standing nationalist demand that can be traced as far back as the early days of political nationalism. In 1885, prominent figures of the Renaixenca and political Catalanists issued the Bases de Manresa, a short document that was supposed to serve as the basis for the regional constitution of Catalonia.

Although the boundaries of the citizenry were not strictly delimited and the rules of naturalization unspecified, the text mentioned that “only Catalans, by birth or by virtue of naturalization, shall be eligible to work in the public administration (Base de Manresa No. 3).”

132. As the Generalitat is formally a bilingual administration, applicants are also required to speak Castilian to be eligible for the Catalan civil service.

133. The Manifesto reads: “This initiative has not been motivated by a primary Anticatalanism, but by a series of measures taken in recent years, limiting the official and public use of Castilian, constraining the right of receiving education in one’s mother tongue, and violating the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of one’s language…”

Manifiesto de los 2.300, in reference to the number of “intellectuals and professionals who live and work in Catalonia” who signed the petition, published on January 25, 1981.

134. Encyclopèdia.cat, entry ‘Crida a la Solidaritat’.

142 demonstrated the same intransigence, which led some to fear that the linguistic conflict may become intractable and spill over to politics. In this context, the need to reach a consensus as broad as possible became more pressing. On the one hand, CiU and ERC sought to achieve a maximal Catalanization of the education system, even if this came at the price of creating a two-track scheme, whereby individuals would have the right to choose the dominant language of instruction (Ardelaguët 1996: 112-9). On the other hand, PSC was in favour of a bilingual system and committed to the principle of non-separation, not least because the party feared that institutionally entrenching the linguistic division would make the task of bridging linguistic communities increasingly difficult. CiU enjoyed a better position than its socialist rival, as the latter could easily be accused of Anticatalanism if a consensus failed to be reached. Besides, the recently-voted LOAPA¹³⁵ Law in the Spanish Parliament, passed with PSC support, made this risk particularly acute. The party was originally opposed to fully-fledged and exhaustive legislation. However, it soon came to realize that CiU would not compromise and sought to negotiate a middle-ground, engaging in the difficult task of simultaneously polishing its Catalanist credentials, containing the influence of the PSOE in Madrid, and defending the interests of working class immigrants. Ultimately, PSC consented to the gradual Catalanization of the education system, and CiU endorsed the principle of non-separation. The Law of Linguistic Normalization was unanimously voted by all Catalan MPs in 1983, with the aim of consolidating the use of the Catalan language in “all settings and guarantee the normal and official use of Catalan and Castilian.”¹³⁶ This remarkable consensus has meant that the linguistic issue has remained largely disconnected from politics, especially as the law was brought to the constitutional court which ruled out some of its dispositions in a legal battle that lasted until 1995.

Throughout this period, the divide between the central state and the Generalitat overshadowed internal dissensions within Catalonia. Indeed, “the defence of the Catalan language, when it comes under attack, homogenizes the ideological diversity of political parties, as there is, at this very moment, one single enemy” (Cabré et al. 1986: 142).

135. The LOAPA – Organic law for the harmonization of the autonomous process – was passed in the Spanish Parliament in 1982, as a result of a pact between PSOE and UCD, with the aim of slowing down the devolution process. PSC MPs voted in favour of the law, although the negotiations saw some important dissensions between the PSOE and the Catalan Federation. The Catalan socialists paid a high electoral price for this decision at the 1984 Autonomous elections and have, ever since, carefully sought to emancipate themselves from the PSOE, at least in the Catalan political arena.

136. Law 3/1983 of Linguistic Normalization, passed in Catalan parliament on June 15, 1983.

143 Initially, the system allowed for a significant degree of flexibility, as the language mix could be tailored according to the sociolinguistic landscape of each locality. While all schools were obliged to provide a bilingual education, individuals were in theory free to choose among three paths: maximal, medium and minimum Catalanization. However, the balance was rapidly tipped in favour of Catalan, especially after the programme of linguistic immersion was introduced in 1984. This decision came in response to a recent report which indicated that in schools with a high concentration of Castilian speakers, the objective of guaranteeing that all pupils would be proficient in both languages by the end of the period of compulsory education would most likely not be met. From a psycho-linguistic point of view, it was justified by the fact that language acquisition is a function of its meaningful use in context (Arnau et al. 1995).. Accordingly, the purpose of the programme was to provide an environment where Catalan functions as the exclusive means of communication. Instead of specifically targeting pupils whose parents were not born in Catalonia, the programme was applied to all schools where the proportion of ‘non-native Catalan speakers’¹³⁷ exceeded 70%. In 1992, another decree was passed, further decreasing the degree of individual choice. By 1993, 88.8% of schools had reached a maximum level of Catalanization, whereas schools in which the language of instruction was predominantly Castilian had by then almost disappeared.