Spain allows lawmakers to speak Catalan, Basque and Galician languages in Parliament

MADRID (AP) — Spain’s Parliament allowed its national legislators to use the country’s minority languages of Catalan, Basque and Galician for the first time on Tuesday.

The reform of the linguistic policy of Spain’s lower chamber was a demand of Catalan separatist parties to support the appointment of a Socialist as the new Parliamentary Speaker last month following inconclusive national elections in July.

The right to speak languages other than Spanish in the national Parliament is a long-held objective of smaller parties from the regions in Spain’s north that have bilingual populations.

"(This change is) ... to normalize something that is already common for citizens who speak a language other than Spanish,” said Socialist Party member José Ramón Besteiro, who alternated between Galician and Spanish to become the first lawmaker to take advantage of the modification.

The Parliament provided simultaneous translation with earpieces for the 350 members of the chamber as well as for the nationally televised transmission of the session.

The conservative opposition was against the reform, saying it would make debating more difficult.

Spain’s government is also trying to have Catalan, Basque and Galician recognized as languages that can be used in the European Union.

This support of Spain’s minority languages comes as acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is hoping to cobble together the backing from nationalist and even separatist parties from Catalonia and the Basque Country to form a new left-wing government.

Catalan is spoken by around nine million people in Spain’s northeast, its Balearic Islands, as well as a small population in France. Galician is spoken by some two million people in northwestern Spain, while Basque has 750,000 speakers in Spain’s Basque Country and Navarra regions.

Spanish is also known as “castellano” or “Castilian” in Spain for its origins in the Kingdom of Castile. It is spoken throughout the country of 47 million people, including the regions where minority tongues survive.

Spain’s 1978 Constitution recognizes its minority languages as co-official along with Spanish in regions where they are spoken. Their use is common in regional parliaments and town halls.