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Home , Carche, Extremadura, Galician language, Generalitat Valenciana, La Franja, Valencian Community

Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of

F. Xavier Vila, David Lasagabaster, and Fernando Ramallo

Contents Catalan-Speaking Territories ...... 506 Historical Background ...... 506 The “New Immigrations” Decade (2000–2010) ...... 508 The Evolution in the 2010s: The Perfect Storm? ...... 509 Basque-Speaking Territories ...... 510 Historical Background ...... 510 Galician ...... 513 Historical Background ...... 513 Bilingualism and Education ...... 514 Conclusions ...... 515 Cross-References ...... 516 References ...... 516

Abstract A historically multilingual country, Spain is today legally divided into 17 auton- omous communities and 2 autonomous cities. The 1978 Spanish Constitution stipulates that Castilian – i.e., Spanish – is the official language of the Spanish

F.. Vila (*) Faculty of Philology, Department of Calan Philology and , University of , Barcelona, , Spain e-mail: [email protected] D. Lasagabaster Faculty of Philology, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, The Basque Country, Spain e-mail: [email protected] F. Ramallo Department of Translation and Linguistics, Universidade de , Vigo, , Spain e-mail: [email protected]

# Springer International Publishing AG 2017 505 O. García et al. (eds.), Bilingual and Multilingual Education, Encyclopedia of Language and Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02258-1_28 506 F.X. Vila et al.

state and that all have the duty to know it and the right to use it. The Constitution also acknowledges Spain’s multilingual character and, accordingly, confers legislative powers to the autonomous communities – by means of their statutes of autonomy – among others, in the areas of language policy and education. Every autonomous community has implemented its statute in a differ- ent way: Catalonia is officially trilingual, whereas Galicia, , the , the Basque Country, and the are officially bilin- gual. Hence have Basque, Catalan, Galician, and Occitan become also official in (most of) their respective territories. The rest of the autonomous communities are officially Spanish-monolingual, even though several among them host historical minority languages such as Asturian, Aragonese, , Tamazight, or Portuguese. Language-in-education policies in Spain have been a contended area for centuries, especially in the six territories with more than one official language. This chapter describes briefly the sociolinguistic historical backgrounds of these autonomous communities, grouped in three language areas and focuses on contemporary dimensions of bilingual education. The paper chapter ends with a short reflection on bilingual as a whole.

Keywords Basque • Castilian • Catalan • Galician • Spanish • Valencian • Language policy • Immersion

Catalan-Speaking Territories

Within Spain, Catalan is the native language of Catalonia, most of the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, as well as and Carxe/, two small regions included in the mostly Spanish-speaking autonomous communities of Ara- gon and , respectively. Catalan is also spoken natively in , where it is the sole official language, the French Department of the Eastern and the Sardinian city of .

Historical Background

Derived from , Catalan became fully standardized in the thirteenth century and knew a golden literary age until the late fifteenth century. It was the main official language of the Crown of and retained its official status in Catalonia, , and the Balearic Islands until the eighteenth century, although its position at the courts weakened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when these territories became part of the multinational empire whose capital was placed in Castile. During these centuries, education was imparted in Catalan, with Latin being used as the scientific and academic lingua franca. Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of Spain 507

The Spanish War of Succession (1700–1714) dissolved the and annexed its kingdoms to Castile. The new royal Bourbon dynasty launched a policy aiming at homogenizing linguistically its Empire by spreading the knowledge and use of Castilian. Education was progressively Castilianized, and a new university was created under direct supervision of Castilian authorities. These policies stretched until the twentieth century (see Ferrer i Gironès 1985; Vila i Moreno 2008). Assimilationist policies were often resisted: teachers and pupils often used Catalan in the classrooms, and the language was officially reinstated in schools at every single episode of democracy and autonomy, such as during Catalonia’s Mancomunitat (1914–1923/25) and during the Republican autonomy (1932–1939). One of the first measures taken by the Franco’s Spanish military dictatorship (1936/39–1975) was to ban Catalan from schools and public spheres (Benet 1995).

The Normalization Period (1980–2000) In the aftermath of the dictatorship, the political opposition claimed for language freedom and autonomy. During the dictatorship, Catalan speakers had all become bilingual and literate only in Castilian, and cultural infrastructures in Catalan were very weak. Besides, during Franco’s rule, millions of Spanish-speaking immigrants had settled down in the Catalan-speaking territories, and towards Castilian had taken place in the main cities of Valencia. The 1978 Spanish Constitution was a compromise solution. It retained the official status of Spanish all over Spain and the duty to be proficient in it for all citizens, but also opened the door to official status of other languages (Pradilla Cardona 2011; Vila i Moreno 2011). Catalonia was the first Catalan-speaking territory to gain autonomy (1979) and soon spearheaded the process of linguistic normalization (McRoberts 2001: 139–160). Catalan became a compulsory subject matter in primary and secondary education and accepted as a medium of instruction. The first immersion programs were launched. Simultaneously, teachers were progressively required to prove their ability to teach in Catalan or alternatively follow recycling courses. By the mid-1980s, evidence showed that language courses alone would never make Spanish speakers bilingual, while immersion programs were giving evidence of success (Alsina et al. 1983). Following the 1983 Law of Linguistic Normalization, Catalan became the means of instruction for an increasing number of subjects for all schools, in a process that led to its being the main means of instruction all over Catalonia in the 1990s. This was the birth of the Catalan conjunction model, based on two principles: children should be educated together irrespective of L1 and Catalan should be the basic medium of instruction. The model represented an answer to two basic fears: societal division between descendants of natives and descendants of Spanish immigrants, and the risk of depriving Castilian speakers of access to Catalan proficiency. In 1994, the Spanish constitutional court validated this model. The 1980s and 1990s decades also saw the progressive introduction of Aranese Occitan as a subject and a medium of instruction in the schools of Val d’Aran, an 508 F.X. Vila et al.

Occitan-speaking enclave in the Catalan Pyrenees. In this region, a multilingual school model encompassing both Catalan and Castilian was introduced. In Valencia, the recovery of Catalan was hindered by a polarization between the left, basically in favor of linguistic normalization, and the right, opposed to any language recovery and arguing that “Valencian” was a language different from Catalan. A fragile consent was built around the Statute of 1982 and the 1983 Law of Use and Teaching of Valencian: standard Catalan – with minute dialectal differ- ences – became a compulsory subject under the label of “Valencian,” and education was organized on the basis of three different programs : (a) Program of progressive incorporation (PIP), with Castilian as the basic means of instruction; (b) Valencian- medium education, with Catalan as the means of instruction (PEV); and (c) Language immersion program (PIL), in Catalan for Castilian speakers. In the Balearic Islands, Catalan became a compulsory subject in 1986 thanks to the Law of Linguistic Normalization, but education remained under total control of until 1992. In 1997, the Balearic Parliament passed the 92/1997 “Decree of Minimums” indicating that all schools should teach at least 50 % of their subjects in Catalan. In time, this percentage was widely surpassed by most schools in the Islands. Neither in la Franja nor in Carxe was Catalan recognized as an official or even a protected language, and education remained officially Castilian-medium. In la Franja, pupils were allowed to study Catalan thanks to an agreement with the Government of Catalonia, and the vast majority took the opportunity.

The “New Immigrations” Decade (2000–2010)

Since 1999, Spain entered an economic boom fostered by the , which attracted millions of immigrants from all over the world. Simulta- neously, thousands of middle class citizens became established in newly founded resorts. In less than a decade, the population in the territories rose from 11 to 13 million, and the foreign population rocketed from less than 2 % to more than 15 % (Domingo 2014). While the middle class European Union residents tended to send their children to private, international schools, accommodating low-paid immigrants became a social priority. In Valencia, immigrants tended to enrol in PIP programs and did not learn Catalan. In Catalonia, the immersion program was transformed into a new immersion methodology developed for linguistically heterogeneous groups, and all schools were required to have their detailed Linguistic Project. The new immersion was based on the premise that language learning was a consequence of interaction with peers, not a prerequisite to get in touch with them, and had as its cornerstone the aules de acollida (“welcoming classes”), a system that combined mainstreaming with partial pull-out for language and content learning reinforcement. Another initiative was the Plans d’entorn, i.e., the environment plans, that tried to create ties between schools and their immediate social environment to facilitate community-based learning. Some heritage programs for immigrant languages Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of Spain 509

(e.., Arabic, Bengali, Dutch, Tamazight, etc.) were developed, usually with the support of the countries of origin and basically in the form of optional after-school classes. By the new decade, the results of each system were obvious: according to the 2011 census, proficiency in Castilian was high everywhere, but figures for Catalan were very different. In Catalonia, 85 % of youngsters between 15 and 29 declared to be able to speak Catalan, and 81 % said they could write the language (Idescat 2014).1 One year earlier, only 56 % of their Valencian counterparts claimed to be able to speak the language at least “rather well,” and only 51 % could write it ( Valenciana 2010; Arnau and Vila 2013). The first part of the decade saw the recrudescence of the conflict between the central authorities and Catalonia. The Catalan Parliament passed a new in 2006 and a new Law of Education in 2009, both enshrining the preeminence of Catalan in Catalonia’s educational system, with a large majority. But the rightist and centralist Popular Party, with just a handful of MPs in the Catalan Parliament and in the opposition in the Spanish Parliament, took both of them to the constitutional court in a move to have them declared unconstitutional.

The Evolution in the 2010s: The Perfect Storm?

The economic crisis which started in 2008 put an abrupt end to the immigration flows and diverted resources for integration to social care. In 2010, the constitutional court published its sentence about the Statute of Catalonia, reinforcing the status of Spanish, which was flatly rejected in Catalonia. In November 2010, the Catalanist center-right won the elections to the Catalo- nian Parliament. The new educational authorities focused their attention on literacy and foreign languages, and encouraged the use of English in CLIL programs. But the sentence of the constitutional court started to have an impact and courts required Catalonian schools to use more Spanish in schools. 2011 saw the Popular Party winning the autonomic elections in May in Valencia, Balearic Islands, and Aragon, as well as in the central government elections in November. The new authorities took initiatives in language in education policies: the Valencian Government passed the 127/2012 Decree, redesigning the educational system so that all programs became multilingual, with either Catalan or Castilian as a base language and some subjects taught in the other official languages and in English. But rather than increasing plurilingualism, the new policy led to the suppression of numerous existing Valencian medium programs, which were converted into “multilingual” Castilian programs. In Aragon, the PP Government passed a new 3/2013 language law reducing the already scarce status of Catalan. In the Balearic Islands, the Parliament passed Decree 15/2013 requiring all schools to teach 1/3 of subject matters in Catalan, 1/3 in Spanish, and 1/3 in English, which

1http://www.idescat.cat/dequavi/?TC=444&V0=15&V1=1 510 F.X. Vila et al. resulted in an extremely conflictive 2013–2014. Finally, the new 8/2013 law of education passed by the central government – designed, in the words of the Minister, to “turn Catalan pupils into Spaniards”–established that autonomous authorities should pay for education in Castilian in private centers if public offer was not available – but not in Catalan (see also below). By the end of 2013, following massive demonstrations, the biggest Catalan parties agreed on holding a consultation about independence on November 9, 2014. Simultaneously, the Spanish central authorities pursued their policies of recentralization and reinforcement of Castilian. Language-in-education policies are doomed to be a relevant issue in the foreseeable future of the Catalan language area.

Basque-Speaking Territories

The Basque-speaking territories in Spain are divided into two different entities: the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) and Navarre. The term Basque Country, used to encompass all the territories occupied by the Basque speech community, includes the so-called Northern Basque Country, which forms part of the French Département de Pyrénees Atlantiques.

Historical Background

The eighteenth century was decisive in the decline of Basque. In Spain, the absolutist Bourbon monarchy’s trend in favor of centralization (1716) reached the linguistic sphere and Castilian was introduced as the only official language. In the nineteenth century, industrialization fostered the arrival of many non-Basque-speaking workers in the new industrial towns, where more and more Basque speakers found it necessary to learn and use Castilian for the first time (Gardner 2000). Three other factors still determine the evolution of the nowadays: the small number of Basque speakers, its limited territory, and the administrative divisions. Basque, of unknown origin and the only pre-Indo-European language to survive Latin in the Spanish State, is one of the main symbols representing Basque identity (see Hualde et al. 1995). The Basque language has historically been characterized by its minority status, surrounded by two powerful and international languages such as Spanish and French, which is the reason why all Basque speakers are nowadays bilingual. According to 2011 data (Basque Government 2013), 2,649,000 people older than 16 live in the Basque Country as a whole, the majority of which (70.7 %) live in the BAC, 20.2 % in Navarre, and the remaining 9 % in the Northern Basque Country. This demographic imbalance means that the BAC clearly determines the reading for the Basque Country as a whole, which is why special heed will be paid to this territory. Since Basque acquired co-official status with Spanish in 1978, many efforts have been made to revive it and prevent language loss. The repression exerted during Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of Spain 511

Franco’s dictatorship had triggered a great linguistic and cultural awareness and a popular desire to recover the Basque language and culture. Consequently, Basque became a symbol of identity and of belonging to the group. Currently, Basque (euskera) and Castilian (espan˜ol or castellano) are co-official languages in both the BAC and Navarre. From the early 1980s, both communities began to achieve a high level of normative and managerial autonomy in the field of education. The percentage of fluent Basque speakers in the BAC is 32 –11.7 % in Navarre and 21.4 % in the Northern Basque Country – but, whereas this percentage has increased almost 8 % in the BAC and only 2.2 % in Navarre during the last two decades, it is steadily going down (5 %) in the Northern Basque Country due to the fact that Basque has no official recognition in . Although school education plays the main role when it comes to the process of making people Basque-speaking (the so-called basquisation process), literacy cam- paigns for adults have similarly been at the core of the recovery process of Basque. The aim has been to achieve the greatest number of bilingual people capable of expressing themselves in Basque, especially among all those who did not have the chance to study Basque or through Basque, a possibility that was not available until 1983, except for some few private (Basque-medium schools) that were set up in the 1960s. The 1983 decree establishing the use of the Basque language at preuniversity levels in the BAC set up three linguistic models: (i) Model A: this is a program in which Castilian is the vehicular language and Basque is only a subject (4 per week). The L1 of the students is Spanish. Although it was originally designed to include some subjects in Basque in the last years of compulsory education, which would make it comparable with the Canadian late partial immersion, this original resolution has never been implemented; (ii) Model B: this is an early partial immer- sion program in which both Basque and Castilian are used as means of instruction. Students’ L1 is usually Castilian, although some may be Basque L1. This is the most heterogeneous model (as some schools are closer to model A and others to model D, see below), and depending on different factors such as the sociolinguistic setting in which the school is located or the availability of Basque teaching staff, the time allotted to each of the languages in the curriculum may vary; (iii) Model D: Basque is the means of instruction, which is why it is a total immersion program for those students whose L1 is Castilian and a maintenance program for those with Basque as L1. Castilian is only taught as a subject (4–5 h per week). In time, the two bilingual models (B and C) have become much more popular than the monolingual model A, in which students achieve a very poor command of Basque despite spending more than 12 years learning it as a subject. From the data provided in Fig. 1, it can be concluded that model A is in constant decline and today only represents 16.7 % of the whole, model B has undergone little variation, whereas model D encompasses the greatest number of students and follows a continuous upward trend. Model D is the only one that produces balanced bilingual speakers, since its students are approximately equally fluent in Basque and Spanish. However, some students living in Spanish-speaking areas may be unable to achieve a satisfactory 512 F.X. Vila et al.

2012-13 16.7% 20.6% 62.7%

2008-09 18.9% 21.4% 57.3%

2005-06 24.0% 23.2% 52.3%

2002-03 30.6% 22.5% 46.4%

1996-97 31.5% 27.7% 40.7%

1990-91 50.6% 24.4% 24.9%

1983-84 72.8% 10.5% 16.5%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Model A Model B Model D

Fig. 1 Evolution of the three linguistic models at preuniversity level command of Basque after finishing their schooling, as their contact with Basque is restricted to the school context and they hardly ever use it after school. In Navarre, the Basque law of 1986 established the status of Basque at preuniversity level and divided this autonomous community into three linguistic zones: the bascophone zone, the mixed zone, and the nonbascophone zone. Basque is only officially recognized in the bascophone zone, where around 10 % of Navarre’s 537,000 inhabitants older than 16 live. The right to receive teaching in Basque is assured only in the bascophone zone, whereas in the mixed area it is allowed on condition that there is sufficient demand, and it is very restricted in the nonbascophone zone. As for linguistic models, in Navarre the three previous models are also found (models A, B, and C) plus model G, in which Basque is not taught at all (for more on this see Oroz and Sotés 2008). In the 2010/11 academic year, model G (71.6 %) was by far the most popular one, whereas the percentages of models D (19.3 %) and A (8.4 %) clearly lagged behind. The presence of model B classes was marginal (0.4 %). The percentage of immigrants in the BAC (6.8 %) and Navarre (10.5 %) is lower than that in Spain as a whole (12.2 %). As far as education is concerned, in the last few years immigrant parents are favoring models B and D in primary education in the BAC and to a much lesser extent in Navarre, but they still tend to mainly enroll their children in model A in the BAC and model G in Navarre. This trend reveals that there exists an urgent need to encourage and increase immigrant students’ partici- pation in the bilingual models, as otherwise it could convey the belief that these programs are only good for the local students. By restricting immigrant students’ learning of Basque, their prospects are being limited, since the lack of Basque proficiency prevents them from fully integrating in society. Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) courses in English, that is, content subjects taught in English (any subject can be taught in English, as it depends on teacher availability) have undergone a rapid development (especially in the BAC and to a lesser extent in Navarre) in the last decade. Some voices (Basque militants Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of Spain 513 afraid of the presence of a second international language, English) complain that the efforts made in favor of the normalization of Basque may be jeopardized by the inclusion of subjects taught in English, which ineluctably reduces the space devoted to the . The future challenge lies in fostering students’ English proficiency while ensuring that the new CLIL approach does not have any detri- mental effect on the development of Basque and students’ attitudes towards it, as the few research studies available so far seem to confirm, since Basque competence and attitudes are not negatively affected (see Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010). Thus, the challenge ahead lies in the incorporation of CLIL courses in the already existing bilingual programs while ensuring a balanced development of the two co-official languages in order to promote Basque through an integrated multilingual language policy.

Galician

Galician is the historical language of the Galician Autonomous Community in northwestern Spain. While spoken in parts of three other regions – , Castile and Leon, and – only in Galicia does it have the status of a co-official language (in addition to Castilian). In Castile and Leon, the statute on autonomy recognizes the need to promote Galician in the territories in which it is spoken, whereas in Asturias and Extremadura it has no legal status. Due to large-scale migration of during the twentieth century, Galician is also spoken by significant numbers of people in several Latin American capitals.

Historical Background

From its beginnings as an independent romance language during the High , Galician-Portuguese (the medieval name for the language) was consolidated as an everyday language. The first written texts appeared towards the end of the twelfth century, which was when Galician-Portuguese literature emerged. The impact of Galician-Portuguese was so important that from the beginning of the thirteenth century until the middle of the fourteenth century, it was the language in which most lyric was written throughout the Christian kingdoms of the . Language contact between Galician and Castilian also began in the thirteenth century. The major sociolinguistic consequences of that language contact arose from the sixteenth century, when a slow process of language shift began that has continued up until the present, accentuated by the progressive centralization of the Spanish state with the arrival of the Bourbon monarchy in the eighteenth century and the imposition of Castilian as the compulsory language of instruction since 1768. In the twentieth century, the most repressive period of the Franco dictatorship was between 1936 and 1960, when a series of laws were passed designed to limit the public visibility of all minority languages in Spain (Freitas 2008). 514 F.X. Vila et al.

In Galicia, the most important consequence of Spain’s language policy during the Franco regime was an unprecedented erosion in the intergenerational transmission of Galician. Large numbers of Galician speakers born between 1920 and 1950 did not transmit their native language to their children, thus creating a linguistic gap, a generation of Galicians that did not speak Galician fluently. By 1975, once the groundwork to partially restore the rights of Galician speakers had been lain, there had been a significant decrease in the number of people speaking Galician. In addition, negative linguistic attitudes by Galicians themselves further eroded the use of Galician’s historical language.

Bilingualism and Education

With the passage of the Language Normalization Act of 1983, the Galician educa- tional system launched a unique model of bilingualism, called conjunction of languages, with both Galician and Castilian as the languages of instruction in all levels of education except in preschool, where the main language of instruction is the L1 of most students. That model was compulsory in all public schools. The main objective of the model was to ensure that all the students, regardless of their L1, acquired a similar level of competency in both Galician and Castilian by the end of their secondary school education. Both languages are used in the same classroom. In fact, the model does not allow students to be separated based on their native language. Also given the current state of legislation in Galicia, it is not possible to implement a Galician-language immersion program in areas where Castilian is the main language of interaction and socialization, as is the case in most Galician cities. Over the last three decades, the conjunction of languages model has been implemented in different programs, some of which can hardly be considered bilin- gual because most instruction was in Castilian. Although the use of Galician in the school curriculum is fully accepted by the educational community, each change of government administration brings with it a change in language policy. This has led to a tense debate over the role of the two languages in Galician society. Often bilingualism is perceived as a political problem by political parties, without consid- ering the consequences this has on society. For example, the positive effects of bilingualism are often dismissed when Galician is one of the languages being taught in the school system. Until 2010 regulations established that in Galicia courses in Galician and Castil- ian were both mandatory for a minimum of subjects per week but left the schools considerable discretion to determine the language of instruction for the remaining subjects. This regulation changed with Executive Order 79/2010 on multilingualism in nonuniversity education in Galicia, which imposes a 50/50 Galician-Castilian split in the number of hours taught in the two co-official languages, or, in the case of trilingual schools, a one 33/33/33 Galician-Castilian-English. This regulation does not apply to preschool education. In preschool education, the languages of instruction are Galician and Castilian. The curriculum requires teachers to use the native language of the majority of the Bilingual Education in the Autonomous Regions of Spain 515 students in a given class. Given the geographic stratification of the two languages in Galicia, this means that the use of Galician is residual in schools located in the cities. In primary school, Castilian must be used to teach mathematics. Galician is to be used to teach a subject called “knowledge of the environment” (which deals with geography, history, and the natural sciences). For the remaining subjects, the aim is to achieve a 50–50 split between Galician and Spanish in the number of hours of instruction. In secondary schools, Galician must be used both in the social and natural sciences, and Spanish must be used in mathematics and computer science. There is very little data available on the degree to which the model’s objective of ensuring that students acquire a similar level of competence in both languages is in fact achieved. Research conducted at the University of de Compostela concluded that high school students’ competency levels in Galician are lower than in Spanish (Silva 2010). The teaching of Galician in the other autonomous communities where it is spoken is very uneven. In the regions of Bierzo and in Castile and Leon, some subjects are taught in Galician in nonuniversity education but only if parents want it. In some schools in western Asturias, where Galician-Asturian (the autoglotonym) is spoken, the instruction of Galician is an elective rather than a required course. In Extremadura there is no instruction of Fala, the autoglotonym. Finally, it should be noted that although educational authority has been trans- ferred to the autonomous communities, central regulations issued by the Spanish Parliament still require uniform content in all autonomous communities. Exercising those powers, in 2013 the right-wing Popular Party, which enjoyed an absolute majority in Parliament, was able to get a new educational law passed. One of the most important changes this law brought about was a reinforcement of Castilian- language teaching in all schools in officially bilingual autonomous communities.

Conclusions

Language-in-education policies have been controversial in Spain for centuries. In the last three decades, Spain’s plurilingual autonomous communities have officially espoused the goal of high levels of bilingualism and biliteracy for their entire populations, a goal that is recently evolving towards that of generalized trilingualism. This evolution has also been endorsed by the central authorities. As a result, very few political actors now claim to be in favor of monolingualism. On the ground, though, things are more complex. On the one hand, most educational systems do not manage all students to achieve a high level of bilingual- ism and biliteracy. During the twentieth century, Castilian has become a ubiquitous linguistic resource that is vastly predominant in everyday life, mass media, and consumption, also in the officially bilingual communities. As a consequence, Castilian-medium or “balanced” bilingual programs rarely achieve the goal of high-level bilingualism and biliteracy, especially as far as Castilian L1 speakers are concerned. This goal is only obtained by those educational models where the local language is the predominant means of instruction, that is, when the school 516 F.X. Vila et al. manages to compensate the overwhelming presence of Spanish out of school. This fact is nevertheless often disregarded by wide sectors of Spain’s Castilian monolin- gual majority who cling to the idea that they have the right to L1 monolingual education even in the bilingual territories, leading to periodical political clashes with sectors concerned with the future of the territorial languages. The fact that the central authorities retain ample legislative powers in the educational sphere, and often use them in favor of Castilian, exacerbates these conflicts. Bilingual education in Spain’s multilingual autonomous communities faces a number of challenges. The first one remains that of achieving generalized bilingual- ism which is still not reached in all territories. Second, it remains to be seen whether educational systems can effectively contribute to the promotion of out-of-school use of the historically minoritized languages. Results in this area so far are not encour- aging. Third, wide sectors of society are demanding that proficiency in foreign languages among the new generation increases. In this sense, there exists growing interest in analyzing how CLIL programs in English fit within the current bilingual education models, taking into account that these programs are often perceived as competitors with the minority language. It should not be forgotten that the Balearic, Valencian, and Galician governments have actually used the promotion of English as an alibi to diminish the role of Catalan or Galician. Fourth, the great immigrations in the 2000s brought hundreds of languages to the schools that have so far received very marginal attention. It remains to be seen whether they can also be better accommodated in the current models. Finally, it would be desirable that the mono- lingual Castilian society adopted a more positive view of Spain’s linguistic diversity. This may soften the pressure these programs often experience from the central and even some autonomous authorities and open larger tracts of Spain’s society to the benefits of plurilingualism.

Cross-References

▶ Bilingual Education in Europe: Dominant Languages ▶ Sociopolitical Issues in Bilingual Education ▶ Bilingual Education Policy

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