The manifesto “Llengua i República” by the Grup Koiné, which calls for Catalan to be the only official language of any future Republic, has burst on to the country’s political scene. And through the front door. The head of the Catalunya Sí Que es Pot’s (CSQP) electoral list, Lluís Rabell, during a parliamentary session on Tuesday, accused the president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, of adopting a “racist position” and being a “cultural fundamentalist” and he called on him to distance himself from the manifesto. “In this parliamentary majority there is a firm commitment to guarantee all the linguistic rights of everyone in the country,” Puigdemont intervened, taking the controversy as done with.
According to Rabell, the manifesto is “the inverted reflection” to the “pressure” Catalan is under, and he lamented the talk of “immigration as an element of ‘involuntary colonisers’ of Francoism.” He pointed out that a good part of the migrants who came to Catalonia in the ’60s and ’70s “were decisive in assuring the social cohesion of this country, defending the unique school network, Catalan as a common language…,” and he warned that the manifesto “undermined” the unity that exists in Catalonia. The PSC leader, Miquel Iceta, did not avoid applauding Rabell when he ended his speech.
??”It worries us that some figures in the parliamentary majority have signed it. His government should be more careful,” the head of the CSQP electoral list said, criticising the former minister, Irene Rigau, for signing the manifesto. Yet, according to what El Món could discover, the former minister and MP, Irene Rigau, did not give her support to the text, but rather it was one of her sisters and a newspaper printed the mistake.
According to Rabell, the manifesto “is very worrying, because it puts fundamental elements of coexistence in doubt.” However, the Catalan president shrugged off the controversy as an “academic debate” and insisted that “linguistic rights are perfectly defined in the government’s programme, which is explicit on this subject.”
. @lluisrabell reclama a Puigdemont ser “més contundent” davant el manifest “racista” del Grup #Koinéhttps://t.co/3u02BqcCJ2
— CAT Sí que es Pot (@catsiqueespot) 6 d’abril de 2016
