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The driving licence priority lane

Because they choose to? How many?
Because they don't know how to do it in Basque? How many?
Because it's not an option in Basque? How many?

It's not easy to measure intention. I don't have figures. Nor is it easy to measure ability, but I can make an enlightened guess: the Eustat website states that around 70% of secondary school students in Gipuzkoa study model D and the remaining approximately 25% model B (1). It may not be too far off the mark to affirm that, given the linguistic habits acquired in their education, many of them are not only qualified to do so but that they would also have no problem in learning to sit their driving test in Basque. Perhaps not too far off at all.

We could also discuss whether or not they should be able to do so. But that's a slippery slope if ever there was one. However, when defining what should be done to promote use of the Basque language, we could suggest, and you don't have to be an expert in linguistic planning to do so, that for the linguistic development of almost all youngsters in Gipuzkoa it would make quite a lot of sense and would even be interesting if, as well as learning their entire obligatory secondary education in Basque, they were also able to do this practical, attractive and inordinately expensive extracurricular activity in the language; by that I mean sit their driving test in Basque. It makes complete sense for anyone willing to think it through.

We can also measure impossibility. But therein lies a similarly complicated task. I've said that all youngsters in Gipuzkoa sit their driving test in Spanish, but that's not completely true either. Someone must have sat it in Basque in the past (they used to be able to choose) and there are very likely some who have done so recently (the right is still in place today).

I passed my test it in Spanish about twenty-five years ago and my nephew has just passed his, also in Spanish (at a cost of around €2,000). While we both had the right to choose, neither myself twenty-five years ago nor my nephew five months ago were offered the possibility as standard practice.

At a time when the option of educational models isn't in vogue, I consider that the introduction of model D to driving schools is, at least, legally necessary and a linguistic priority. But how to proceed?

One option is to leave it in the hands of the Spanish state. This is the natural option (because it's their responsibility) and the one with the least chance of happening (if we look at their efforts over the last 30 years).

If you don't mind the pun, on the European Day of Languages, for example, the State could issue a declaration regarding continuity of the effective, solid and above all proactive linguistic policy implemented by its administration in the Basque Autonomous Community and, as a result, in strict compliance with the law, that it plans to propose measures making it possible to sit the driving test in Basque (among other moves, and within the proposal of adapting linguistic profiles, that it will review the dates on which the introduction of bilingual examiners is to become compulsory), and that it will foster the drawing up of didactic material and help driving schools throughout the entire process of change.

A second option would be to create in Gipuzkoa a platform to lobby for being able to sit the driving test in Basque. That's another possibility.

And yet another, the third, is the option launched the Commonwealth of Debagoiena; to involve Gipuzkoan driving schools, town councils, the Provincial Council and the Vice-ministry of Language Policy in the task of converting this dead end into a priority lane.

It's not the way things are usually done, nevertheless...

Note:

(1) The Basque Country has three language medium education models: A - Spanish; B - Spanish and Basque and D - Basque.


Iñaki Arruti
Basque language technician in the Town Hall of Lasarte