In Spanish: TVE, La2 (some local output in Catalan), T5, A3TV, Cuatro, La Sexta, C+
In Catalan (mostly but not always): TV3, El K3/33, 3/24, BTV (Canal 300: old soaps).

Local channels with little budget and mostly amateur staff:
In Catalan (most of the time): 8TV, Canal Català,
In Spanish: Localia
In English: I don’t get one but I’d love to get some BBC channels like BBC2-3-4 or BBC News.

So I stand by what I wrote: there is much more output in Spanish and in Catalan in the mainstream channels (5-7 mainstream channels vs 2-4 (note I count BTV, even though it is a local channel as most of the work is done by salaried staff these days…).

Of course if we take the smaller local, amateur channels then there are more channels in Catalan but they are the equivalent of hospital radio.

Rab’s secret: in a previous life, I studied “Imatge i So” and worked for a few of the channels mentioned above, or in their predecessors.

I still have property in Catalonia, visit whenever I can, and I am in contact with my parents, relatives and friends: don’t patronise me, thanks.

As for your assertion that you have met pupils who are not fluent in Spanish, I very much doubt it. If this was a pervasive problem, TeleMadrid and El Mundo would love it. For a start, it would be against the sacred Spanish Constitution. However, we do know of significant numbers of pupils in the Barcelona area who are not fluent in Catalan, yet this is not deemed to be a problem. I wonder why…

“there is not a single pupil who leaves school in Catalonia without being fluent in Spanish”

I have asked you several times to prove this. You still havent. Care to be a man and admit you could be wrong or have lied?

A revelation has just come to me. I realize that I maybe wrong! About you being anti-Spanish that is. If so, I apologize. Profusely. But I also realize the probable root cause of why I got that impression: Your last paragraph tells me why, along with a lot of other stuff. If you had experienced even a small amount of day to day living in Catalonia, you would know that there are now far more than “2-4 channels in Catalan but over 5-7 in Spanish” (also revealing in the use of words, but thats a different story). I’m not sure how many in total I get, but on a tv near Barcelona the first 10 or so channels are mainly in Catalan, with a smilar amount also in Spanish (cant be bothered to check exact figures: I dont like TV much). There’s even a channel that is predominently in English I think, so maybe you should also count that one as “against” Catalan aswell.

If you did actually know much about Catalonia today, you wouldnt be stating yet another obvious untruth to back yourself up. You really aren’t helping things when you continually state as fact things that may have been true many years ago, but are not true today. Catalonia has clearly changed from the time when you took your snapshot and formed your opinion.

The fact that the official vehicular language is/should be Catalan, does not mean that in reality classes are done in Catalan. We all know of schools that do not comply, for whatever reason. If you bothered to speak to young people, maybe you would find out. Of course some students are not fluent in Catalan, despite the (supposed) use of Catalan as the vehicular language: if they live in a monolingual Spanish-language environment in a suburb in Barcelona where the vast majority of the population is first or second generation immigrant, and not bilingual, then they will not be able to interact in Catalan outside school. That’s precisely why the use of Catalan as the vehicular language in education is crucial. It achieves two purposes: to ensure that Catalan language does not die out, (surely we are not pursuing the obliteration of Catalan language, are we?), bjut equally importantly it also gives everyone the best chance to be truly bilingual.

I remember when I was little and before the private TV channels (T5, A3 and C+) came on. At that time, there were 4 TV channels, 2 in Spanish and 2 in Catalan. Even my father, who after 40 years in Catalonia still does not speak Catalan, would make an attempt to watch TV3. Now, 20 years later, there are still 2-4 channels in Catalan but over 5-7 in Spanish. In Flanders, or Quebec for example, this is not the case, but that’s another issue altogether.…

You say:
“we all know of school-leavers who are not fluent in Catalan”. “The present system is the only one that gives all pupils a chance to be bilingual, by using Catalan as the vehicular language”

So catalan is the vehicular language (usually > 80% of state school classes are in catalan) yet you and your pals know of many school leavers who cant speak it. That just does not make sense at all does it? Your argument here gives much more credence to my anecdote than yours. How odd!

You have the right to talk shite about my blog, no problem with that.

But try to get this in your head: I, and the overwhelming majority of people in Catalonia I know, still have to meet a school-leaver who is not fluent in Spanish. However, we all know of school-leavers who are not fluent in Catalan. That is the state of affairs of languages in Catalonia. The present system is the only one that gives all pupils a chance to be bilingual, by using Catalan as the vehicular language. This is what the EU report says, and what the vast majority of parents in Catalonia want, given that there is overwhelming support for the current system in the Catalan Parliament, with only one party, Ciudadanos, about 4% of the vote, overtly using this issue as their main policy driver. Even the Spanish nationalists of the PP send out mixed messages on this topic.

If there was a problem with pupils not being fluent in Spanish, we all know that the [Spanish] nationalist media would find them and report on it. But they don’t. Because there ain’t.