Together with other parties, Esquerra Republicana has introduced a motion to reform the Spanish Senate Rules of Procedure with the aim of guaranteeing the full and normalized use of Catalan

Esquerra Republicana, Basque Euskal Herria Bildu and EAJ-PNB, Catalonia’s Junts per Catalunya, Galician Bloc Nacionalista Galego, Valencian Compromís, Navarre’s Geroa Bai, and Eivissa i Formentera have introduced an alternative motion for Senate Rules of Procedure Reform with the aim of guaranteeing the full and normalized use of Catalan, Occitan—Aranese in the Aran Valley—Basque and Galician in the activities of the Spanish upper chamber. The modification has been presented in accordance with art.196 of the Senate Rules and art.72.1 of the Spanish Constitution.

The parties representing territories with languages ​​other than Spanish in the chamber agree on the need “to promote the necessary regulatory reforms in order to definitively guarantee the right of elected officials to carry out their parliamentary business in all the official languages ​​of the State.”

The objective of the Reform of the Rules, which has been introduced as an alternative to that already presented by the People’s Party, is to “correct the serious violation of rights” that the banning of the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the Senate entails, while “attaining the normal and full performance of elected officials’ business in the chamber of territorial representation,” as well as “furthering the wealth deriving from linguistic plurality, and the right of citizens to be served in the official language of their choice.”

Among the modifications included in the Reform is that “Senators may intervene in the chamber, in the committees and in all parliamentary business, in the functional bodies of the Senate, as well as in all its governing bodies, and in acts and activities of official representation in any of the languages ​​that are official in any autonomous community, in accordance with the Constitution and the corresponding Statute of Autonomy.”

In the same vein, “any Senator shall have the right to question the Government in any of the official languages, as well as to ask the Government questions—by means of a letter addressed to the Presidency of the Chamber—and to receive the corresponding answer to the written questions within thirty days following their communication, in the language in which such written questions have been addressed.”