La situació jurídica de la llengua occitana a la Vall d'Aran

Resum

While trying to approach his topic from an Aranese perspective, the author analyzes the legal repercussions of the imposition on the Aranese people of both Castillian and Catalan, as stated in the Spanish Constitution and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. In relation with these prescriptions, a discussion unfolds on the situation in which the Provençal language spoken in the Aran Valley —mistakenly called «Aranese»— is relegated. The author's thesis stems from the observation that the legal values of officiality and autochthonous character have not been attributed to this language through statutary channels. What is established in terms of language policies by the Spanish Constitution, the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, the Normalization of the Catalan Language Act and the Special Statute of Aran is discussed and compared especially in terms of the contradictions arising among these legal frameworks. The author refers to the constitutional text in order to demand the right of the Provençal language to achieve official status, and points out that the Statute of Autonomy can be seen as an obstacle to this end in that it neither declares the officiality nor recognizes the Provençal language as autochthonous in its own territory. Moreover, the author emphasizes the fact that both from the Statute of Autonomy and the Normalization of the Catalan Language Act can be deduced that it is viable to declare both Catalan and Provençal as the autochthonous languages of the Aran Valley. The legal meaning of triple officiality is also analyzed and special emphasis is given to the issue of the normalization of the use of Provençal so that it can reach the same degree of equality that the two other official languages enjoy in the Valley. The question of the competences in language policy shared by the different authorities is also discussed. The article ends with a series of proposals among which it is worth noticing that of the adaptation of the different legal frameworks to the subject of officialitty and autochthonous character of Provençal, the regulation of any tuitive action affecting this language, and that attention be paid to any mechanisms of International scope.