Alex Trelinski
VALENCIA region parents will decide whether their children are mainly taught in Spanish or the Valenciano language from the 2025-26 school year.
A majority vote for each year in each school- for example in the fifth primary grade next September- will determine which language will dominate in a 60-40 split.
Valencia’s Minister of Education, Jose Antonio Rovira, said the region was getting 560,000 families to choose the main teaching language.
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“The time when the government decided is over and lessons will be taught based on what parents want,” he stated.
“This gives them a choice and decision-making capacity to follow their will,” he added.
An online vote takes place between February 25 from 9am, ending at 2pm on March 2.
Rovira pointed out that his department was ‘neutral’ over the issue and that the ‘voice of the family is key to the process’
He added that whatever the result for each school year, the system will ‘remain’ balanced, with a 20% difference in lessons between one language and another.
“The idea is that all students have a command of Spanish and Valenciano at the end of their compulsory school education,” Rovira added.
The issue of lessons in Valenciano has been a vexed one in parts of the region, especially in the south of Alicante province where the language is rarely used.
Nevertheless opposition groups in the Valencian parliament have slammed the vote as an ‘attack on Valenciano’.
Socialist eduction spokesperson, Jose Luis Lorenz, has accused President Carlos Mazon of ‘applying ultraconservative ideology and attacking the language that identifies the Valencian people’.
The far-left Compromis party asked the Valencian Superior Court(TSJ) on Monday to suspend the vote, saying the government wants to ‘pit families against families’ and wanting to start ‘a linguistic war’.
Two pro-Valenciano groups had their petitions for similar action rejected by the TSJ last week.
Meanwhile, there have been reports that some teachers are trying to influence voting by suggesting to pupils that they may be moved to another class away from their friends if their parents ‘vote for Spanish’.
The vote results are expected in May.
