Chapter 10

From normalisation to sustainability

The policies of public authorities on the status of Catalan since the political transition have not been planned in a systematic way, and have evolved under the disinterest and adversity of Spanish and supranational powers, without overcoming the fragmentation of regional governments and the discontinuity of actions. This paper analyses in a broad way the stages and frameworks in which these public policies on the status of Catalan have taken place. Until the end of the eighties, a linguistic normalization approach predominated, focusing on the creation of a legal and institutional framework that would allow the process of linguistic substitution to be reversed. The need for general language planning became apparent at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, but since the end of this last decade, the central idea has been the politics of language. More recently, the changes induced by the process of globalization have led to a perspective focused on linguistic sustainability, which has gained ground in the early 21st century. After the judgment 31/2010 of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, Spain’s policies have been particularly adverse to Catalan. Without a coordinated action of the Catalan-speaking territories being able to overcome the current subordination, the future of Catalan is uncertain.