Babel in the Senate

Published on 20 January 2011

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"Zapatero defends ‘pluralist’ Spain”, leads Público in the four official languages that, since January 19, can now be used for communications in the Madrid Senate and are translated simultaneously: Castilian, Catalan, Basque and Galician. In his speech to senators during the vote on the new statute of autonomy for Extremadura, the head of government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, defended the step on the grounds that “All of these languages are the languages of Spain”. The measure is qualified by the newspaper as a “plea in defense of the autonomous model.” But the model is attracting growing criticism both from within the conservative opposition and from some sectors of the socialist majority because of the very high deficits of local governments, notes the paper.

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