MADRID (AFP) — Spanish may be one of the world's most-spoken languages, but a group who masters it better than most fear the lingua franca of Cervantes is under threat in the very place it started -- Spain.
Backed by big names from opera diva Montserrat Caballa to Real Madrid's goalkeeper Iker Casillas, the group of writers and intellectuals issued a "manifesto for a common language" to uphold the primacy of Castilian, as it is called here, over Spain's popular regional languages.
"In the last few years, there are more and more reasons to be concerned in our country about the institutional situation of the Castilian language," it says.
One of the bolder examples is a plan by authorities in the Balearic island of Majorca to set up a "language police" to impose the local Catalan language in restaurants on this popular tourist destination.
The manifesto was written by high-profile figures like Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater and some 20 others to try to goad Madrid into asserting the right to use Castilian anywhere in Spain.
The socialist government in Madrid, however, has been reluctant to take such a step. The issue is sensitive since the use of regional languages was repressed under the 1936-1975 right-wing dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, sparking a fierce backlash to revive their use when democracy was restored.
"The Spain which exists as we know it for hundreds and hundreds of years, is one which speaks in one language and in several," Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero told the socialist party's annual congress only last month.
But the manifesto clearly struck a nerve, in a country where regional and "Spanish" identity often compete. Since June, when it was launched and promoted by the right-wing daily El Mundo, more than 135,000 people have signed the text.
Castilian, named after the central region of Castile, is the official language in this country of 46 million people, though worldwide it is spoken by 400 and 600 million people, mostly in Spain's former colonies in Latin America.
About one-fourth of all Spaniards also speak one of the three main co-official regional languages -- Catalan, Basque or Galician.
The regional government of the Basque Country, where much blood has been shed over separatist demands, wants to offer public education mainly in Basque -- which has no proven links to any other language -- and reduce Spanish-language instruction to three hours a week.
In the northeast, proud Catalonia, whose language is more similar to Spanish than the other two, has already had such a system in place for the past 20 years.
Road signs in Galicia in the northwest and the Basque Country in the northeast are increasingly written only in Basque or Galician, which is similar to Portuguese.
Some fear this trend undermines national unity and violates their constitutional right to use the "official" language where they want.
It also makes life difficult for visitors, according to the Tourism Panel which groups about 30 major Spanish tourism-related companies that also back the manifesto.
"Bilingualism is not respected in several regions and this creates problems for national tourists, who only speak Castilian, and for foreigners," argued its director Juan Andres Melian.
Some parents are also up in arms, forming associations to demand the right to educate their children in Spanish.
"Its a fundamental right to receive an education in the language of your country and it is being ridiculed," said Susana Marques of the Platform for Linguistic Choice, one such group recently set up in the Basque Country.
Regional officials retort that they only want to thwart the loss of local languages.
"It is not meant to marginalise Castilian but to support the weaker language," said Jon Asla of the Basque ministry of education, insisting that Spanish will always be the "dominant language".
The advocates of regional languages point to the Catalonia region, where students consistently achieve higher scores in Spanish on national tests despite two decades of instruction primarily in Catalan.
"Linguistic diversity is an asset, not a defect," said a spokeswoman for the Catalan education ministry.
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