El Tribunal Constitucional avala l'exigència de la capacitació lingüística per accedir a la funció pública de les comunitats autònomes amb dues llengües oficials. Comentari a la STC 46/1991, de 28 de febrer

Resum

Six years after the central government appealed Article 34 of the Generalitat of Catalonia's Law of Civil Service, claiming it was unconstitutional, the Constitutional Tribunal handed down ruling 46/1991, which holds the article to be constitutional. The article requires candidates for civil service jobs in Catalonia to be certified as having knowledge of Catalan. The paper analyses the arguments used by the Constitutional Tribunal, and concludes that they are applicable to other autonomous communities in which there are two co-official languages, and to all branches of public administration within a given co-official language community. The Constitutional Tribunal believes that to require minimum language competence of any person working in a public agency located in an autonomous community having two official languages, such as is the case of Catalonia, is not discriminatory, nor does it produce inequality among Spaniards, since Catalan is an official language according to the Spanish Constitution and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, as well as the distinctive language of this territory. The author studies the reasons —based on the declaration of Catalan as an official language peculiar to Catalonia, the constitutional principle of efficiency in the functioning of the autonomous administrations, and the generalized dissemination of Catalan— which caused the Constitutional Tribunal to consider it reasonable to attach importance to the knowledge of Catalan as a general requirement for competency. Although the long wait is regrettable, ruling 46/1991 represents a great step forward, so that all branches of public administration (autonomous, local, and offices of the central government located in the outlying areas) can properly comply with constitutional and statutory principles regarding co-official language status in their respective administrations.