Madrid (EFE).- The Plenary of the Constitutional Court has annulled as unconstitutional the requirement of priority use of Basque in the municipalities of the Basque Country for undermining the linguistic rights of its members.
The court of guarantees has thus estimated the question of unconstitutionality promoted by the High Court of Justice of the Basque Country, in relation to article 6.2 of the Law of Local Institutions of the Basque Country, understanding that it establishes the prevalence of Basque over Spanish in the town halls.
This article regulates the language in which the minutes and documents issued by local entities may be drawn up and establishes that they may be drawn up in Basque, although it qualifies that “as long as the rights of any member of the entity are not infringed.” that can validly allege ignorance of Euskera”. The Constitutional Court annuls a precept of the Basque local institutions law that punishes Castilian.
The TSJV considers that the law prevents the constitutional right to use Spanish freely by members of local entities, while the Basque Government maintains that the Constitutional Court has already ruled that local entities can use both Basque and Spanish with normality in their internal relations or in their communications with citizens.
“Unjustified and disproportionate imbalance in the use of Spanish”
And now the Constitutional maintains that the Basque norm, by prescribing a priority use of Basque, causes an unjustified and disproportionate imbalance in the use of Spanish, by establishing formalities or conditions so that the representatives of local entities can exercise their right to free choice.
That is why the ruling declares the requirement to validly allege ignorance of Basque to be able to exercise the linguistic option unconstitutional and null.
With this requirement, the linguistic balance between the two co-official languages is broken by conditioning the use of Spanish to the lack of knowledge of Basque, so that the rights of free choice in linguistic matters of those who represent citizens in local entities are unreasonably restricted. .
The court recalls that the Constitution “does not oppose the adoption of a policy focused on the defense and promotion of the co-official language. Quite the contrary, the Constitution refers to the need to protect and respect the different linguistic modalities of Spain as part of our cultural heritage”.
But it is not in accordance with the Constitution to normatively grant preference in the use by the public powers to an official language in relation to others that are also official.
Preferences between the two official languages
The sentence explains that “the local entities of the Basque Country, as a public power, cannot have a preference for either of the two official languages” and that “repeatedly, this court has held that citizens have the right to use Spanish or the of the autonomous community in its relations with all public institutions”.
The Plenary decision has the particular vote of Judge Laura Díez and Judge Ramón Sáez, who consider that the question of unconstitutionality should be dismissed.
In his opinion, the law respects the constitutional jurisprudence that says that the legislator can adopt linguistic policy measures tending to correct possible situations of imbalance and that the public powers must address citizens and members of local corporations in the language chosen by these, “both conditions are scrupulously met in the standard.”
The magistrates refer to the jurisprudence that indicates that the non-comprehension of the co-official language has always been the reason behind the obligation of the public powers to address citizens in Spanish to state that “the challenged rule only reflects now this obligation to the sphere of local corporations”.