Languages and public jobs

A few days ago I was talking with a friend who lives in Barcelona. Nowadays, talking with someone from Cataluña means talking about independence and related topics. That day the agenda involved the feeling of my friend that in Cataluña they are almost banishing Spanish language and pushing Catalan hardly.

At some point, we started to discuss if it would be fair if so that have a public job in Cataluña you were required to speak Catalan. Nowadays, if you want to work for Cataluña regional government you need to speak Catalan, but if you work for the Spanish government you don't need to.

My friend says that it would be very unfair that the Spanish government would require Catalan knowledge to work in Cataluña, because those born in Cataluña would have an advantage to get that job. He added that the jobs should go to the ones that are better prepared to do the tasks involved.

I said that maybe, if you want to work for the public in Cataluña, you are better qualified if you speak Catalan, so you should be asked to speak it. I agree Catalans would have an advantage, but Catalan language is not something limited to Catalans. You can be Japanese and learn to speak Catalan, and the same happens if you are Spaniard.

If you are born poor, you have less chances to get a public job too. Even when the system doesn't admit it, when you are poor, you have worse education than if you are rich, and when the time to study for the public contest that will get you a public job comes, being poor is a disadvantage. Should be make it easier to get public jobs for poor people? I really do not know in any of the two cases.

However, I think this controversy about the Catalan is much more related with the hatred that people have against the Catalan language or against the Spanish language than with a real concern about what is fair or better for the general public.

Actually, as our education system is now, that many university students have issues to understand what they read, I’m sure that if they would require a Catalan exam to both Catalan and no-Catalan applicants, many of the Catalan ones would fail.

The violence generated with this topic on the both sides of the controversy is very high. Each side feels like the others are attacking them and, in the meantime, corruption goes on in both regions.

How convenient is to have a common enemy for politicians.