In 2004, the Spanish Social Democrats (PSOE) led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero had promised for the first time to stand up for officiality of Catalan in the European Union. At the time, he received the votes of the Catalan social democrats ERC (Esquerra Republicana) for this. He did not keep his promise.
https://elpais.com/diario/2004/04/16/espana/1082066408_850215.html
https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2004/04/16/espana/1082114067.html
In 2023, the liberal Junts party, which advocates state sovereignty for Catalonia and is closely linked to the Catalan president in exile and still the last elected legitimate president, Carles Puigdemont, will play a special role in the election of the Spanish prime minister. The latter is elected by the Chamber of Deputies («Congreso de Diputados»), which consists of 350 deputies. Neither the left nor the right camp can currently achieve the majority of 176 votes required for the election of the prime minister without the support of Junts. The Partido Popular (PP), which is politically clearly to the right of the German AfD and was once founded by Franco's ministers, would cooperate with the Vox party, which is neo-fascist in parts, but would still only achieve 170 votes in this alliance. The left-wing alliance consisting of several parties under the leadership of the Social Democrats can unite 171 votes. Both camps thus lack the votes of the Catalan Junts party to be able to elect a prime minister in the first round who, once elected, could easily govern with a parliamentary minority, as has been the case several times in Spain.
It is hard to expect that the Spanish social democrats, who have always agreed in principle with the Spanish right-wing parties when it came to the oppression of Catalonia and the violation of the human rights of the Catalan nation — for example, in 2017 they agreed that for the first time since Hitler in Western Europe and in breach of organic law of the Spanish state, a democratically elected parliament was dissolved, a democratically elected government was declared deposed without sufficient legal basis and human rights in Catalonia were violated a million times over — will give in on essential points or keep their promises. This has long been painfully known to the Catalan people and their political representatives.
Now the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, in his distress, has not only promised that Spain will advocate that Catalan, Basque and Galician, which are considered ‘semi-official languages’ in the European Union, and which are not only spoken in Spain, should be included in the list of official languages of the European Union, but has actually arranged for Spain, through the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to submit a proposal to this effect on 17 August 2023. Spain, through the Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, submitted an official request to this effect to the European Council responsible for this matter on 17 August 2023 and asked for it to be included on the agenda of the meeting on 19 September 2023. We will have to wait and see whether the Spanish side is serious about this request. It would only be accepted with the unanimity of all states of the European Union. It would be sufficient for Spain to secretly agree with one or two states that they should vote against Spain's motion in the European Council on 19 September 2023, so that it would be rejected, in order to be able to announce with crocodile tears that Spain had done everything in its power to satisfy the party of Junts and to obtain their votes, but that the motion had unfortunately failed because of the veto of other states.
The European Union would certainly do well to include the relatively large language Catalan and the two smaller languages Basque and Galician among its official languages. Catalan is spoken by more than ten million people in Catalonia, on the Balearic Islands, in the country of València, in Andorra, in the French part of Catalonia and in Sardinia. According to the Eurostat study «Europeans and their languages», published in 2006 (https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/api/deliverable/download/file?deliverableId=37733 Catalan was spoken by about 2 per cent of the population of the then European Union, making it comparable to languages such as Portuguese, Hungarian or Slovak in the EU.
Today, the European Union comprises 27 states with about 446.8 million people and 24 official languages. English is still an official language, although it has not been deposited as an official language by any state since Great Britain left, as Ireland has deposited Irish and Malta Maltese as official languages. English is spoken in Ireland, if one neglects the number of Irish speakers, and Malta by about 5.67 million people (5.15 million Irish, about 519,560 Maltese) and thus, in the only states where it is an official language, it only accounts for about 1.27% of the citizens of the European Union, whereas Catalan, with its nowadays at least 11.5 million speakers, accounts for about 2.6% of the citizens of the EU, who to this day have to remain speechless vis-à-vis the European institutions and are linguistically excluded in many ways.
If Spain’s application is rejected on 19 September on the grounds that the cost of translation would be too high if the number of official languages were extended from 24 to 27, Europe would incur far greater political costs and a credibility deficit by continuing the linguistic exclusion of 2.6% of its Catalan citizens. English, on the other hand, which is no longer backed by any European state and which has only a few native speakers in the European Union, should remain not only an official language but also a working language, and languages such as Swedish, for example, with its 8.5 million native speakers, which have fewer speakers than Catalan, would in such a case continue to be official languages, whereas Catalan, which is spoken by more people, would not.
The pact that the Spanish party PSOE and the Catalan party Junts made and under which they voted on 17 August 2023 for the election of the Mallorcan social democrat Francina Armengol as parliamentary president, who quoted the great Catalan national poet Salvador Espriu in Catalan at the end of her first speech as parliamentary president, provides for four points for Junts' support in the elections of the parliamentary presidency:
1. Spain should advocate that Catalan, Basque and Galician be recognised as official languages of the European Union.
2. to allow the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the Spanish Congress.
3. that a parliamentary commission of enquiry be set up into the Islamist attacks of 17 August 2017 in Barcelona, which were allegedly carried out with the knowledge of the Spanish state.
4. a parliamentary commission of enquiry should be set up into the alleged illegal interception practices of the Spanish state by means of spy programmes such as Pegasus and Candiru.
This may not seem like much at first, but this agreement only concerns the elections for the parliamentary presidency, not at all those for the office of prime minister, for which Spain's left will probably have to pay a much higher price. For Carles Puigdemont and Míriam Nogueras will ensure that Catalan interests are not shortchanged should they support the re-election of Pedro Sánchez, who since 2017 has proved to be more of an enemy than a friend of Catalonia. Even if he appears to be the lesser evil in view of the alternative, the far-right party Partido Popular and the in parts neo-fascist party Vox, from the Catalan point of view new elections are definitely an option. The costs that Spain bears and will have to bear because it strictly denies the Catalan nation the exercise of its human right to self-determination will steadily increase and lead to a political polarisation in Spain that could lead the whole country to the sidelines.
«Junts per Catalunya no dóna, ni donarà mai, els seus vots a canvi de res ni amb l'objectiu d'estabilitzar l'estat. L'objectiu de Junts és la independència de Catalunya i tots els acords que subscriu serveixen per avançar en aquesta direcció.»
«Junts per Catalunya does not and will not give away its votes for nothing or the goal of stabilising the state. Junts' goal is Catalonia's independence, and all the agreements it signs are to move forward in that direction.»
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/detalls-acord-junts-psoe/
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/puigdemont-oficialitat-catala-unio-europea/
https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/govern-espanyol-notifica-ue-catala-llengua-oficial/