Barcelona, Spain – Barcelona celebrated the La Mercè festival from September 23 to 28, the city’s largest annual cultural festival.
In the celebrations, more than 500 activities took place, including fireworks, music shows, art exhibitions, and a drone show.
The most integral elements of the 6-day jamboree, however, were traditional Catalan activities, from the Sardana traditional dance and the castellers (human towers) to the els gegants procession through the city, which is accompanied by elaborate papier-mache figures.
La Mercè has been celebrated in Barcelona since the Middle Ages, but became especially important in 1871, when it became an official city holiday. As Barcelona’s “festa major” (major party), it is a celebration of Catalan culture, traditions, and identity.
Catalan Language
Despite the cultural celebration it entails, La Mercè 2025 took place against a precarious linguistic backdrop. According to Catalonian officials, the prominence of the language has decreased in recent years, despite an overall rise in the number of people who speak it.
The 2023 Survey on Language Use of the Population (Enquesta d’usos Linguístics de la Població– EULP) details the steady increase of people who understand Catalan; in 2023, 6.3 million people understood the language, compared to 5.4 million in 2003.
The number of Catalan speakers also increased from 4.6 million to 5.5 million in the same twenty-year period. However, the number of Catalonians who regard Catalan as their language of identity fell by 9%, with 49.2% of respondents in 2003 regarding it as such – compared to just 40.4% in 2023.
Catalan is a Romance language that is spoken by over 10 million people and understood by 12 million. As the co-official language in the Catalonia northern Spanish region, the Balearic Islands, and the Community of Valencia- as well as the official language of Andorra- it transcends communication, and has become a cultural pillar for millions.
Throughout Spanish history, Catalan has been iteratively repressed. During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera- from 1923 to 1931- it was banned in official and educational capacities, and while these restrictions were lifted during the Second Spanish Republic, it was once again prohibited under General Francisco Franco’s regime (1939-1975).
Following Franco’s fall in 1975, the Spanish transitioned to democracy. Such a process entailed the recognition of Catalan as a co-official language in Catalonia, the Community of Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, while efforts were made to promote its use in public spaces and schools.
Recent years, however, have seen a shift in favour of Castillian, with more people identifying primarily as its speakers, or as bilingual. In the report’s examined timeframe, the percentage of individuals who say Catalan is their first language fell from 36.2% to 29%.
Some advocates for the Catalan language say this trend could threaten the language’s cultural relevance, as well as their linguistic rights.
Reasons for the decline in Catalan usage
Plataforma per la Llengua, a Catalan language advocacy group, argues that this linguistic shift is principally due to an increase in migration, linguistic discrimination by the Spanish state, and the failure of Catalan autonomous institutions to enforce laws that would protect it.
In the past twenty years, immigration to Catalonia has increased, with over 1 million people arriving between 2019 and 2023. However, the proportion of the population made up by immigrants has remained fairly constant, with 37% of residents being born outside Catalonia in 2023, compared with 34% in 2003.
Anna Arqué, a spokesperson for Mantinc el Català, an organisation which promotes the use and practice of Catalan, told EU Reports that the regional government should offer more resources to immigrants to learn and practice the language: “We are a strong culture in our country, but we fail to have a state that cares.”.
The importance of learning and practicing Catalan benefits both native speakers and immigrants, according to Arqué. “[Catalan] language is a gift, and an integration tool,” she added.
The demand for Catalan classes for immigrants far outstrips the current supply, and there are few opportunities for those learning Catalan to practice the language, the spokesperson noted.
“If you don’t have the budget to make campaigns or to make resources so people can practice Catalan, then it’s a problem”.
This view is also supported by Juan Martínez-Gil, a Catalan lecturer at the University of Cambridge.
“Ambiguity arises concerning the vitality of the Catalan language. On one hand, it is one of the most learned minority languages in Europe, thanks to strong linguistic policies in Catalan-speaking regions. However, once new speakers in these areas learn Catalan- often for academic or professional reasons- most do not use it on a daily basis and continue to use Spanish,” he told EU Reports.
“Consequently, one of the biggest challenges today is to find ways to encourage these potential speakers to use and live in Catalan,” Martínez-Gil continued.
Even among Catalan speakers, evidence suggests that few speak it habitually, according to the 2024 sociopolitical survey carried out by the Generalitat.
This decrease was more pronounced among younger people, who are less likely to choose Catalan as their identifying language. In fact, three-quarters of Catalan speakers feel more comfortable when speaking Catalan, but 55% say they speak Spanish to “avoid problems”.
National Government
Arqué also highlights the “catalanophobia” exercised by the national government in both Madrid, and more broadly. According to the spokeswoman, the Spanish government and judiciary has little interest in defending the Catalan language or Catalonia’s regional autonomy.
Catalan use in schools has become an intense public debate in recent years. In 2020, the High Court of Catalonia ruled that 25% of teaching in schools had to be taught in Spanish, and while the decision was appealed by the Catalan education department, the claim was ultimate dismissed by the Supreme Court in 2021.
“The effect of this ruling on Catalan social usage, competence and inclusivity will be toxic,” Dominic Keown, professor of Catalan at the University of Cambridge, told EU Reports.
“The Catalan language is an identity marker, but one that is open to all. The immersion programme in schools has, over the last four decades, offered children from all backgrounds inclusion in the language community of that country: an opportunity to live and thrive there fully,” he further noted.
“But the striking success of this policy, prepared by experts in sociology, pedagogy and psychology, has been torpedoed by Spain’s courts. Judges, not educationalists, have now decreed that inclusion be replaced by division,” professor Keown continued.
“A place for Spanish (imposed by law in 25% of the curriculum) must now be found to fracture the former immersive unity, despite no Catalan child having ever proved incompetent in the language of state.”
The future of Catalan
These recent legal challenges have contributed to feelings of pessimism among some Catalan speakers about the future of their language.
Nearly half of the 2023 survey’s respondents said that the standing of Catalan would worsen in future years, with those aged 16-24 being the most pessimistic.
Arqué, however, is hopeful, and believes the new generation of speakers will promote the language and be more confident in defending their linguistic rights.
Her conversation with EU Reports took place at one of the stalls at La Setmana del Llibre en Català (The Catalan Book Week), another annual festival held in Barcelona to promote books and magazines written or translated to Catalan.
“Catalan is a 1,000-year-old language. We have gone through wars, dictatorships. Now we have globalism [that wants to make us all uniform]”, for which being hopeful for the future of Catalan is “interlinked with a humanitarian worldview,” Arqué concluded.
Featured image:
Image: La Mercè 2025 promotional poster
Source: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB)
