15th March 2025: People from Northern Catalonia protest in Perpinyà (Northern Catalonia's capital city) for the right to have schools in the Catalan language. They chant "l'escola en català, avui i demà" ("school in Catalan, today and tomorrow"). The signs say "a living Bressola [school], a living language" and "institutional support now!".
The French Government only allows public schools to teach in French, marginalizing the local indigenous languages. The local peoples have had to organize among themselves and create their own networks of cooperative private schools to be able to give education in their lands' language. Basque people were pioneers in this, and quickly followed by Bretons, Catalans, Occitans and Corsicans.
These schools are very important in fighting back against the centuries of French supremacist propaganda that says our languages are unfit for the modern world or for the development of a child's brain. French schools used corporal punishment and humiliation on children heard speaking the local language (Catalan, Basque, Occitan, Breton, Corsican, etc) instead of French until the 1970s (more info in this post and this post). As a result, most people in Northern Catalonia don't know how to write Catalan. Nowadays, studies show that 70% of the population of Northern Catalonia wants their children to go to a school where they can learn Catalan, but only 8% of them have been able to. We would like to be able to include them all, but we don't have enough resources, and as a result we lose speakers of the language who will be monolingual French speakers instead.
La Bressola, founded in 1976, is the network of cooperative Catalan-language schools. They have 7 primary schools and 2 high schools, adding up to 1,100 students and 110 staff members. They have excellent modern methodology and affordable prices, because this is not an elite school, it's what we wish could be the public school, so everyone regardless of wealth should be able to access it. For this reason, the price each family has to pay depends on their income (ranging from 36€ to 140€ per month) and the schools refuse to raise prices, they always take an anti-elitist stand, but it's difficult to keep them economically viable. They managed with donations and the few economical aid given by the regional government, but things changed drastically in 2021, when the far right wing parties won the regional elections. Among the new government's first measures were taking away all support to Catalan language and identity, forcing only French language and identity instead (removing public signs of the Catalan soul of places, legally persecuting elected representatives who speak Catalan in town hall meetings...). But the far right wing government not only stopped giving them some (it was already not that much) money, but also has raised the taxes that Bressola schools specifically have to pay. At the same time, inflation made the costs rise.
Yesterday, Northern Catalans protested to ask for the regional government's funds to be reinstalled, aiming at the government's aid being 5% of the school's budget. Without this, the schools will have to reduce the number of students they can take in because they can't pay the staff.
This responsibility shouldn't fall on individuals, it should be paid fully by the state. But meanwhile, if you would like to support La Bressola —institution which is absolutely necessary to keep Northern Catalan alive—, you can make a donation through their website: here. The website is in Catalan, but if you would like to make a donation and need help navigating it, please don't hesitate to send me a direct message and I will guide you through it.
