Albisteak
Ban on promoting Basque in the Navarre administration
The Minister for Education with the Government of Navarre has called off the campaign Administrazioan euskaraz ere bai (At administration also in Basque). Among other initiatives for 2009, the Basque Institute of Navarre, Euskarabidea, had planned a campaign to raise awareness and change attitudes with regard to the Basque language in the Navarre administration.
This campaign, initially scheduled for launch at the end of the year, was positively and actively designed: making no demands whatsoever on the administration staff, the idea was to provide those who wished to identify themselves as Basque-speakers with material corresponding to their linguistic knowledge and take a series of steps towards use of the Basque language in public services. Members of staff who either know or are learning Basque were therefore to receive material such as a poster, a cardboard pen and pencil-holder, a flip-guide with useful standard phrases for dealing with the public and a ruler.
However, on taking over the programme, the Minister for Education, Alberto Catalán, decided not to distribute the material and to call off the campaign.
This decision knocks an even bigger dent in the Government of Navarre's policy to foster Basque. The consequences of the crisis have been particularly harsh on the Basque language: they have caused funds allotted to promoting Basque to drop by more than a half; Basque media subsidies have been withdrawn for the first time since introduction of the Regional Law on the Basque Language in 1986; and, in general, today less public money than ever is destined to fostering Basque.
But the most surprising part of the whole matter is that, having prepared all of the material for the campaign to promote the use of Basque in the administration -and therefore having already spent public money to do so- the decision has been taken to ban its distribution. Not only that, but given linguistic policy and linguistic rights in the Navarre administration as they stand today, the need for an awareness campaign of this kind is patently obvious.
Banning the distribution of material promoting use of the Basque language is not an isolated occurrence. Something similar happened with the school diaries in Basque intended for distribution to pupils. Thousands of copies lie unused in the Department of Education basement. If it continues this way, the Government of Navarre will have to find more space to store its censored Basque material.
Paula Casares
Associate Lecturer of the Public University of Navarre
