Comment: language, power, identity, dominance

The national parliament in Madrid now allows remarks in Catalan, Basque and Galician, with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

I rang parliament a little earlier this morning to check. Did the expensive new multilingual politics plan include translation between all of the different languages? Would there be Basque to Catalan translation, or Galician to Basque for those MPs who wanted it? No, there would not, was the answer. It is only Basque, Catalan and Galician into Spanish, not the other way round and not between the non-Spanish regional languages. Why? Because they all speak Spanish.