Bauza attacked over Catalan

02/08/2013 00:00

Palma.New centre-right Balearic President, Jose Ramon Bauza, has wasted no time in laying the foundations for a radically new government which he recently claimed would set the tone for the next 40 years. This week, he declared that knowledge of the Catalan language is no longer required for people applying for post in the civil service.
In doing so, he has infuriated the opposition parties which for years have battled hard to defend and promote the use of the Catalan language.
The debate over Catalan being a requisite for teachers and doctors, for example, has been a fierce one and has raged for years but it appears that Bauza has put an end to the argument and the left and pro-Catalan groups do not like it at all.

Franco
Yesterday, the far left Esquerra Illes accused Bauza of being no better than the late dictator Franco or Felipe V and that his sole objective was to dumb Catalan down.

Esquerra leader, Joan Llado, said that Bauza is committing cultural genoc ide and is blatantly ignoring the linguistic rights of the Balearic population. The PSM, Green and Entensa party said that Bauza's position on Catalan is intolerable.
The PSM slammed Bauza for dealing with the Catalan issue and creating a social divide before dealing with much more pressing matters such as the local economy and job creation. This move goes against social consensus and is only going to revive the confrontation over the Catalan language, the left wing pact added.
However, in his election-winning manifesto, the Partido Popular's Bauza made his position on the Catalan issue clear.
With many teachers opposed to their children having to be taught in Catalan, Bauza has pledged to give the parent the right to decided about their children's' education.

The Partido Popular is also determined to boost the study of foreign languages, in particular English but the party also wants students to have a good command of the two official languages of our region in addition to a foreign language, so Bauza has not totally closed the door on Catalan in society.