Palma (EFE).- The Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands has refused to impose a minimum of 25% teaching in Spanish, as requested by the father of a student, in an institute in Mallorca where only the Language subject is taught in Spanish, Castilian.
The administrative litigation chamber of the high court rejected the precautionary measure raised by the family of a pupil after the Ministry of National Education ignored their request, a decision adopted by three votes in favor and two against.
The majority magistrates, who drafted their resolution in Catalan, maintain that the law of the Balearic Islands allows the centers to choose to teach all subjects in Catalan except those of foreign languages and Spanish, and point out that the plaintiff does not not prove that he does not have the possibility of enrolling his daughter in another centre.
two votes against
The dissenting judges, in a text in Spanish, emphasize that the precautionary measure is justified in order not to violate the student’s right while a decision is rendered on the merits of the case and indicate that the statements of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court in favor of a Spanish as the vehicular language in Catalonia are applicable to the Balearic Islands.
The decree published on Monday stresses that the imposition of 25% of subjects in Spanish is requested “for a single person and in a single educational center” but it would also be imposed on the student’s classmates, whose families do not not require it.
“This is a precautionary measure which, on the one hand, seriously undermines the general interest and, on the other hand, the refusal of it must be understood as being practically harmless for the applicant” because it has not been justified what relevant damage it could cause, say the magistrates.
The law allows centers to define their linguistic project
They also specify that the law in force in the islands allows the centers to define their own linguistic project according to “the surrounding social, demographic and economic reality” and that in this project, as is the case of the center which makes the object of the disagreement, he can ensure that all subjects except foreign languages and Spanish are taught in Catalan.
“The social and general interest exceeds by the intensity of its necessary protection any particular interest such as that of the appellant”, specifies the court in its order.
It distinguishes the model of the Balearic Islands, based on the independence of the centers for the distribution of the languages of instruction, with a minimum of 50% for Catalan, from that of Catalonia, which establishes “immersion” in one’s own language, and affirms that the resolutions in the sense that the community of the Supreme and the Constitutional are not applicable to the archipelago.
Two magistrates who defend that the educational center should have been ordered to offer the student a quarter of its lessons in Spanish disagree in a private opinion because the alleged damage has not been contradicted by the Ministry of Education , who is the one who would correspond to offer alternatives to the family and that on the contrary, he kept a “discourteous and inadmissible” silence before his request.