Valencian is a topic in the Intergroup

The regional government formed after the regional elections in May 2023 from a coalition of the Spanish People's Party and the VOX party, which had replaced a left-wing coalition, is now seeking a U-turn. VOX represents right-wing populist, eurosceptic and national conservative positions; it rejects special rights for autonomous communities in principle and is against the promotion of languages other than Castilian Spanish. One of the first steps taken by the coalition in June 2023 was the abolition of compulsory multilingual teaching in schools by law. The advocates of Valencian have lodged an appeal against this with the Spanish Constitutional Court.

Adriana Gil Puig (Families pel Valenciá) explained that her organisation was founded precisely because of this new law. She fears a drastic reduction of Valencian in the classroom and emphasises that her fight has strong support among the population (see also this article in this blog). "It is an unnecessary and aggressive law, we now have to fight for something we already had", said Gil Puig at the intergroup meeting. Valencian is being restricted under the pretext of freedom of choice. Anna Oliver i Borrás, the president of "Acció cultural del país Valencià", explained that her organisation was founded in 1978, two years after the death of the dictator Franco, to promote the Valencian language and culture and counteract its decline. Intergroup Chairman Loránt Vincze, who is also President of the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), assured the Valencian organisations of his support. At the beginning of the meeting, he emphasised that political disputes must be kept out of the intergroup, because work for national minorities can only be successful in the European Parliament if there is cooperation across party lines. The background to this is the result of the 2024 EU elections, in which right-wing populist to radical right-wing parties such as VOX, AfD, Rassemblement National and Fratelli d'Italia celebrated great successes. Perhaps because of Vincze's appeal, the political background to the developments in the Valencian Community was only touched upon.