Avaluació de la política lingüística. El tractament del rus a Estònia i de l'espanyol a Catalunya

The goal of this paper is to draw a comparison between the contemporary language policies of Estonia and Catalonia, an endeavor that does not happen to be very popular, as only Laitin (1992) and (just in passing) Druviete (1997b) have taken up the issue in the past. Estonia and Catalonia respond politically in two different ways to two rather similar linguistic situations. Both Estonia and Catalonia have a relatively homogeneous linguistic past which was put to an end by massive immigration in the second half of the 20th century, and this process took place in a context of political subordination within a totalitarian regime, which was clearly detrimental to the local language (Skerret, 2007). Ethnic Estonians constituted 97.3% of Estonian population back in 1945 (Rannut, 2004a, 2004b). In the case of Catalonia, no data on «ethnic groups» are available, but if there were data they would not be radically different. The main difference between Estonia and Catalonia is one of timing: Spanish-speaking immigrants began pouring into Catalonia earlier (in the twenties of the 20th century) than their Russian-speaking counterparts in Estonia. But neither in Estonia nor in Catalonia is one able to forget the long-term cultural influx of Russian and Spanish, respectively.

If we leave ethnicity aside (which is always a shaky concept) and turn to mother / native / first language, the Estonian population census of 2000 shows the following results:

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Table 1. Mis on Teie emakeel («What is your native language »)

Source: 2000 Estonian population census

In Spain population censuses do not collect information on the mother / native / first language of people. In the absence of census data, we must turn to survey data. According to the Estadística d’Usos Lingüístics de la Població of 2008 (from now on EULP), Spanish is well ahead of Catalan as first language and less so as «own» language, as there are more people who consider Catalan to be their language than people who have it as first language. This is due to the well documented fact that a number of former Spanish speakers now consider Catalan to be their language (Torres, 2005; Fabà, 2009). Previous surveys had shown a more balanced situation (Siguan, 1994, 1999), but recent waves of immigration have tipped the balance in favor of Spanish and also turned Arabic into Catalonia’s third language.

Table 2. Recorda quina llengua va parlar primer vostè, a casa, quan era petit/a («Do you remember what language you spoke first, at home, when you were a child »)

Source: EULP 2008. Population aged 15 and above

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Table 3. Quina és la seva llengua («What is your [own] language »)

Source: EULP 2008. Population aged 15 and above

Both in Estonia and Catalonia, linguistic groups are not evenly distributed throughout the territory. In Estonia, Russian-speakers tend to concentrate in the north-eastern corner of the country (Ida-Viru county) and the city of Tallinn (Harju county). In Ida-Viru Russian-speakers form a clear majority; the city of Narva is well-known for its overwhelming Russian-speaking majority. In Tallinn, Estonian-speakers and Russian-speakers are close to a tie (Estonian 52.4; Russian 43.2). In Catalonia, Spanish-speakers are concentrated in major cities, especially Barcelona and its metropolitan area. In the city of Barcelona there used to be also something close to a tie, with Spanish-speakers now taking the lead.

As mentioned before, on these two broadly similar linguistic situations Estonia and Catalonia operate two apparently different language policies. Leaving sign language aside, Estonia is an officially monolingual state, whereas in Catalonia both Catalan and Spanish are official.

Table 4. Official languages in Estonia and Catalonia

We use the word «apparently» because if one looks deeper into this matter one realizes that differences are no that extreme. To show this, we will draw on Cooper’s insight that there are three different senses of «official language».

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According to Cooper (1989: 100), «a language may be official in any or all of these senses»:

· Statutory official language: a language which a government has specified as official by law.

· Working official language: a language which a government uses as a medium for its day-to-day activities.

· Symbolic official language: a language which a government uses as a medium for symbolic purposes, i.e. as a symbol of the state.

To illustrate these three different senses of «official language», Cooper referred among others to Ireland, where both Irish and English are statutory and working official languages but Irish is the sole symbolic official language.

It is important to notice that whereas the statutory and symbolic senses are a yes/no matter, the working sense is a matter of degree. Speaking of Irish, Cooper (1989: 101) acknowledged that «its use as a working language is far less frequent than is the case with English», which he termed «the dominant language».

On the other hand, it is clear that we can combine the above categories and speak for instance of «statutory working [official] language» (a language which a government has specified as working language by law) or «statutory symbolic [official] language» (a language which a government has specified as symbolic language by law). There is also the possibility of distinguishing different levels of government, so that one can speak of the working language(s) of national, regional or local governments.

Bearing this in mind, let us have a look at § 6 of the Estonian constitution and § 3 of its Spanish counterpart:

§ 6. The official language of Estonia is Estonian.

§ 3. (1) Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it. (2) The other Spanish languages shall also be official in the respective Self-governing Communities in accordance with their Statutes.

Both Estonia and Spain have legally specified just one state-wide official language. The difference is, of course, that the Spanish Constitution also legally specifies that «the other Spanish languages» (meaning Catalan/Valencian,

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Galician, and Basque) will be regional official languages. § 6 of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy does two things: on the one hand, it specifies Catalan as the official language of Catalonia, alongside with Spanish; on the other hand, it specifies Catalan both as Catalonia’s own language and the «normal and preferential» language of use in Public Administration bodies (meaning regional agencies and local governments).

§ 6. (1) Catalonia’s own language is Catalan. As such, Catalan is the language of normal and preferential use in Public Administration bodies and in the public media of Catalonia, and is also the language of normal use for teaching and learning in the education system. (2) Catalan is the official language of Catalonia, together with Castilian, the official language of the Spanish State. All persons have the right to use the two official languages and citizens of Catalonia have the right and the duty to know them.

In other words, the Catalan Statute of Autonomy legally specifies Catalan as Catalonia’s symbolic language and as the «normal» working language of the Catalan administration. (The term «preferential» was declared invalid by the Spanish Constitutional Court in its 31/2010 decision. In this paper we will not be able to go into the political controversy triggered by this decision. In any case, Catalan remains the language of «preferential» use in Public Administration bodies and in the public media of Catalonia.)

In the second respect, the provisions of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy resemble that of § 52 (1) of the Estonian Constitution, which explicitly makes Estonian the (working) official language of state agencies and local governments:

§ 52. (1) The official language of state agencies and local governments shall be Estonian.

This constitutional principle is instantiated in § 3 (1) of the Estonian Language Act:

§ 3. (1) The language of public administration in state agencies, local governments and agencies thereof (hereinafter local governments) and the language of service and command in the Estonian Defence Forces shall be Estonian. Exceptions are provided for in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this Act.

In terms of Cooper, behind the 2-official language regime of Catalonia simplistically depicted in Table 4, a more complicated picture appears. In Catalonia, both Catalan and Spanish are (statutory) official languages, but Catalan

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is the only (statutory) symbolic language and it is also the (statutory) dominant working language.

On the Estonian side, a certain complexity also arises. Estonian is not a statutory symbolic language, but it is the only de facto symbolic language of Estonia nonetheless. And, as we will see now, although Estonian is clearly the (statu-tory) working language of state agencies and local government, other (statu-tory) working languages are allowed in principle in local governments of a certain type.

Unlike the Spanish Constitution, the Estonian one does not allow for regional official languages, but still it acknowledges the possibility to use a language other than Estonian as an internal working language of relevant local governments (as a local official language, that is). The same section of the Estonian Constitution that specifies Estonian as the language of state agencies and local governments makes room for this:

§ 52. (2) In localities where the language of the majority of the residents is not Estonian, local governments may, to the extent and pursuant to procedure provided by law, use the language of the majority of the permanent residents of the locality as an internal working language.

Rannut (2004a, 2004b) terms this a «bilingual (territorial) language regime». According to this, § 52 (2) of the Estonian Constitution «enables the existence of the official bilingual language regime in an officially monolingual state» (Rannut, 2004b: 47).

Later on we will see how this constitutional principle is worded in § 11 of the Language Act. Now, it should be noticed that the possibility offered to local governments is bounded in time. According to § 41 (3) of the Estonian Law on Local Government Organisation, «the permission granted on the proposal of the corresponding local government council pursuant to § 11 of the Language Act» is not once for all but «shall be valid until the authority of the corresponding council terminates». Of course, more significant than this is the fact no permission of this kind has ever been granted to any local government (Poleshchuk, 2000; Rannut, 2004a, 2004b).

On the other hand, § 51 (2) of the Estonian Constitution also recognizes a linguistic right (not just a possibility) that is typical of official languages:

§ 51. (1) Everyone has the right to address state agencies, local governments, and their officials in Estonian and to receive responses in Estonian. (2) In localities

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where at least one-half of the permanent residents belong to a national minority, everyone has the right to also receive responses from state agencies, local governments, and their officials in the language of the national minority.

Later on we will see how this constitutional principle is worded in § 10 of the Language Act. Now notice that the Estonian constitution recognizes the right to receive responses from state agencies, local governments, and their officials in the language of a national minority, but not the right to address them in the language of a national minority. As for the oral use of such a language before administrative authorities is regulated in a sui generis fashion (not in terms of rights, that is) in § 8 of the Language Act, as we will see later.

To summarize, our simplistic Table 4 has turned into a more complex one:

Table 6. Official languages in Estonia and Catalonia

Against this background we can reanalyze the debate about the number of official languages of Estonia. It is well known that the idea has been explicitly rejected of specifying Russian as Estonia’s second official language. Talking about all three Baltic states, Druviete (1997a: 181f) made herself clear: «why can’t Russian be declared the second official language in the Baltic states [...] Such an idea must be rejected. The proclamation of Russian as second state language would perpetuate the existence of monolingual population and the fragmentation of society (Diachkov 1994). It is known that under unequal power relationships, equal treatment produces unequal conditions. [...] If there were an official status for Russian, too, the still-existing asymmetrical bilingualism would become deeper, and Latvian, Lithuanian,

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and Estonian would lose more and more functions». In the same vein, Ozolins (2002) stated that in Estonia «there is an explicit rejection of an official two-language policy which would be a perpetuation of the previous regime and a further erosion of the local national languages».

Seen from the point of view of Cooper, this debate is quite nominal. Whatever Druviete and others say, Russian is already Estonia’s second working official language. On the one hand, Russian is one of the languages that might be declared working language of relevant local governments in view of what Rannut generously terms the Estonian «bilingual territorial regime». On the other hand, Russian is de facto a working language of certain local governments. Witness what Ilmar Tomusk, head of the Language Inspectorate of Estonia, said in a 2004 interview at the news agency Regnum with respect to the use of Russian in local governments (translation from Russian is ours):

How did the situation with respect to the use of Estonian change in the past 10 years [...] In many local governments paperwork takes place in Russian, given that a bad mastery of Estonian or the complete lack of such mastery by city councilors or local civil servants does not allow them to use Estonian in this respect. In some local governments, and also in some municipal institutions (for instance in some police stations) translators are hired who translate into Estonian the documents that civil servants have prepared in Russian. There are also such local governments, where sessions of the city council (legislative power at local level) take place in Russian and members of these councils who are Estonian also have to act in Russian.

Many city councilors, for instance in Narva’s and Kohtla-Järve’s city councils, are almost unable to use Estonian as a working language in full measure. Doesn’t it lower the work capacity of local governments Yes, I almost answered to this already. In our last visit to the councils of Narva, Sillamäe and Kohtla-Järve it became clear that each of these cities developed its own practice with respect to the use of language in the sessions of the city council. Whereas in Sillamäe translation is rejected and work is done basically in Russian (Russian is used even by Estonians), in Kohtla-Järve they try to hold sessions of the city council in Estonian, which means that Estonian is used even by non-Estonians. And in Narva the most important points of the order of the day are discussed in a previous unofficial session (in Russian), but in the official session of the city council all decisions are formulated in Estonian nonetheless.

Let us now conclude this section. As we said at the outset, Estonia’s and Catalonia’s language policies seem very different, but if we look deep into this

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matter we discover that differences are no that big; in both instances, the local, (sole) symbolic language is also the (main) working language of state (regional) agencies and local governments. As a matter of fact, one could even say that the use of Russian in Estonia’s local governments is more widespread than the use of Spanish in their Catalan counterparts. What is different in each case is the level of recognition of the other main language of the population (Russian in Estonia and Spanish in Catalonia) in terms of the linguistic rights granted to their speakers. (To this we turn below.) And of course what is very different is the view on the threat that this other language poses to the continuance of the local, symbolic language. According to the Estonian point of view, effective protection of Estonian requires a strict monolingual state, whereas in Catalonia effective protection of Catalan is regarded as compatible with a bilingual polity. In the following section we will discuss how Estonia has been criticized in recent times for not meeting the standards that Estonia engaged itself to meet when she ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. In the light of these criticisms Estonia does have changed certain aspects of her language policy. Significantly enough, what Estonia has done in every instance is to adopt the Catalan preexistent solution. This circumstance might help us ground the pretension that Catalonia should become an explicit model for Estonia not the other way around.

There is a widespread consensus that Estonia’s language policies have not led to any violation of human rights. Rannut (1995: 208) observed that «there have been numerous human rights missions to Estonia, 15 since the restitution of independence, none of which have found any gross or systematic violations of human rights». Ozolins (2003: 219) supported this claim citing the former OSCE’s High Commissioner for National Minorities, Max van der Stoel, who in 1993 «backed the observations of previous delegations in finding "no evidence of persecution of the Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltic States"». And Druviete (1997a: 169) also reminds us of the fact that the language policy of the Baltic States has been the object of monitoring by a number of international organizations and that «the observers did not uncover gross and systematic violations of human rights». According to her, «neither the linguistic legislation nor the practice in the Baltic States gives ground for the infringement of the linguistic human rights of minorities at an individual or collective level» (Druviete, 1997a: 183).

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Yet Estonia’s language policies have given rise to problems with respect to the very international standards that enshrine human rights. In this context, scholars like Ozolins (1999: 43; 2003: 226s) have complained about the pressures put on Estonia to conform to often «invented» international norms, specially in the times prior to Estonia’s accession to the European Union. We will not go into this argumentation. To make our discussion more tangible and less prone to diverging interpretations, in this paper we will stick here to the implementation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, a set of (clearly non invented) international standards that Estonia has explicitly agreed to comply with, and we will concentrate on three very specific issues in which Estonia has not fared (or does not fare) well in the opinion of the Advisory Committee that monitors the implementation of the Framework Convention.

As Tsilevich (2001: 152) put it (italics are ours), «the array of the linguistic legislation which has emerged [...] is usually evaluated as being "essentially in conformity" with the international obligations of the Baltic states. However, serious criticism has also been directed at several provisions». The three issues we will discuss here are (i) the right to use minority languages before public authorities, (ii) the language proficiency requirements in elections, and (iii) the use of minority languages in (private) signs. We leave consciously aside two much-discussed issues that would demand separate papers: the issue of the language proficiency requirements for the acquisition of Estonian citizenship and the issue of language in education.

In a presentation on national integration policies in Estonia Raivo Vetik once asked: «What other countries can learn from Estonia » (Vetik, 2006: 1). Some Catalan scholars believe that Estonia, with its monolingual regime and its treatment of Russian as a «foreign» language, is a successful «language normalization process» and should be a model for Catalonia (Joan, 1996, 2002). The present writer is not so sure. As we have seen in this paper, Estonian language policy vis-à-vis her Russian-speaking population has been problematic in the light of international standards like the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. On the other hand, this very language policy has proven to be partially ineffective with respect to the overall goal of integrating non-Estonians into Estonian society. As Tsilevich (2001: 153) put it, having all three Baltic states in mind, «despite growing bilingualism and efforts aimed at the integration of their respective societies, Estonia, Latvia, and, to a much lesser extent, Lithuania, remain deeply divided along linguistic lines». In this connection, not only is the role of Estonian in everyday interethnic communication still modest: according to the 2007 Estonian Human Development Report, «the legitimacy of English as a local interethnic language of communication has grown considerably during the last five years». This same report warned about the possibility of Estonian as a national language not fully developing as in other nation-states of Western Europe.

Now, if Estonia is not a model for Catalonia, might Catalonia be a model for Estonia The present writer is convinced that Catalonia’s language policy might offer better conditions for the fulfillment of a synthesis of two principles that both independent scholars and international bodies expect Estonia to comply with. In the words of Tsilevich (2001: 153), to cope effectively with the alleged division of Estonian society along linguistic lines, «the efforts aimed at protection and promotion of the state languages must be reconciled with the legitimate concerns and interests of their sizeable Russian-speaking minorities». In the same vein, Doudou Diène, Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council Mission to Estonia (2008), recognized «the legitimate right of Estonia to protect and promote its official language» but also called for the protection of «minority languages» (read: Russian). In this connection, he recommended as a matter of priority:

that the language policy in Estonia be subject to an open, democratic and inclusive debate, in close consultation with ethnic minorities and human rights organi-

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zations, aiming at elaborating consensual strategies that better reflect the multi-lingual character of its society. This process should aim at promoting the living together of all the communities in Estonia on the basis of two principles: first, the legitimate right of the Estonian government to disseminate Estonian language among all residents and avoiding the process of asymmetric bilingualism that characterized the Soviet occupation; second, the respect for the existence of minority languages spoken by sizeable communities, in particular Russian, in full compliance with the Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.

In other words, what the United Nations Special Rapporteur wishes for Estonia might be already a reality in Catalonia. The legitimate right of the Catalan government to disseminate Catalan language among all residents and avoiding the process of asymmetric bilingualism that characterized the Fran-coist period is acknowledged; more specifically, the right to communicate in the Catalan language throughout the whole territory of Catalonia is provided in the law and honored in practice, at least as far as regional agencies and local governments are concerned. Yet at the same time the existence of Spanish is fully respected and the efforts aimed at protection and promotion of Catalan are reconciled with the interests of Catalonia’s sizeable Spanish-speaking population.

Of course, it is quite improbable that, after reading this paper, Estonian authorities will suddenly rush into declaring Russian as Estonia’s second official language. If a more feasible proposal is permitted to the present writer, a first step in the «catalanization» of Estonian language policy would be the ratification of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (with Russian as an explicit target language), something that such diverse organizations as the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance or Amnesty International have already demanded. Ratification of the European Charter would not make Russian statutorily official, not even at a regional level. But its implementation would certainly safeguard the interests of Estonia’s sizeable Russian-speaking population without necessarily damaging Estonian.

In the long term, if Estonian keeps on being the only symbolic language of Estonia and the dominant working language (both things do secure Estonian), and Russian is normally used in the terms of the Framework Convention and the European Charter, there will be little reason to insist on denying Russian the status of second (that is, secondary) state language of Estonia or the

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status of regional official language in the relevant counties of Estonia. In other words, there might be little reason to prevent Estonia from fully adhering to the Catalan model.

To do this, Estonia should be able to remove the key obstacle for the understanding between the Estonian and Russian-speaking communities that Mr Diène identified in his visit to Estonia, namely «the view that the loyalty of the Russian-speakers to the Estonian state is questionable». Russian will be an official language of Estonia when (ethnic) Estonians accept that it is possible to fully identify with Estonia and live as loyal citizens while using Russian. In other words, Russian will be an official language of Estonia when (ethnic) Estonians fully depart from the «one state, one language» motto that still lurks in their heads if not in their policies.

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