Aula 6

Franco’s dictatorship (1939-75) made obligatory the use of Castilian was as the sole language for administration, education and media. Post-Franco regime witnessed Spain’s transition to democracy leading to a new legal framework for its regional languages. It conferred diverse degrees of co-officiality to its minority languages alongside Castilian-Spanish in their respective Autonomous Communities. They were primarily developed to resolve “conflicts” between dominant and minority language(s). In the sociolinguistic scene of Galicia, although the top-down policy rhetoric contests the “one language – one nation” ideology by offering recognition to Galician, in practice, governmental policymakers have marginalised the minority language and attempted to perpetuate systems of socio-lingual inequity through laissez-faire implementations on the ground. This paper offers a review of the sociolinguistic history of Galician, as a means of contextualising existing debates associated with language policies since the outset of the Galician Autonomy. To conclude, the lecture will also offer a critical account of the recent developments in bottom-up language activism such as the creation of Galician medium immersion schools through co-operative mobilisations and crowd-funding.