NATION AND LANGUAGE IN THE STATUTE OF AUTONOMY OF CATALONIA: CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STC 31/2010

This work analyzes the reasoning behind the Sentence of the Constitutional Court (CC) regarding the Statute of Catalonia (S of C) in relation to the concept of nation and to the regulation of the linguistic issue. The text criticises the reasoning of the CC concerning the (indirect) intention of establishing the idea of Catalonia as a nation. The CC refers to the concept of "cultural nation", but redirects the debate towards the concept of "political nation". In this sense, it ignores the evolution undergone by the concept of nation during recent decades in European international law (particularly at the Council of Europe), dissociated from the notion of sovereignty. This concept of nation (or national minority) is perfectly compatible with article 2 of the Constitution, which reserves for the Spanish Nation - the Spanish people as a whole-the possession of sovereignty. With regard to the linguistic issue, three fundamental questions are analyzed. Firstly, the question of the "preferential" nature of the Catalan language. It considers that the CC establishes a correct interpretation of the system of two official languages, which revolves around the citizens' right to use either of them, with the consequences thereby involved. But there is criticism of the twists and turns undertaken by the CC in order to preserve the constitutionality of some provisions of the Statute, after having established the unconstitutionality of the "preferential" nature of the Catalan language. For the above mentioned provisions the CC established what is termed an interpretation "in accordance with the Constitution", but which on occasions proves to be contrary to the very terms of the Statute. Secondly, there is criticism of the fact that, despite the progress made, no clear and convincing interpretation is really established regarding the question of the duty of citizens to know both Castilian and the official regional language. Finally, concerning the question of language in teaching, there is critical highlighting of the acts of contortion required of the CC to preserve the constitutionality of some statutory provisions contested by means of an interpretation " in accordance with the Constitution" which, on occasions, resembles a dialogue of the deaf between the CC and the S of C.