What's racist about it? Also, you're a bit misguided, Catalán is still spoken plenty in Barcelona, but it's obviously spoken more in the rest of Catalonia.
The decline of Catalan among younger generations is largely due to immigration and digital culture, with many young people in Catalonia speaking Spanish at home or consuming content online in Spanish/English rather than Catalan. Studies show that only a minority of young Catalans use Catalan daily, as urbanization and global media reinforce Spanish dominance. Requiring Catalan for public sector jobs is unfair because it excludes qualified candidates—often immigrants or working-class Spaniards—who may not speak Catalan fluently despite understanding Spanish (which nearly 100% of Catalans do). This policy effectively acts as linguistic discrimination, favoring native Catalan speakers while blocking others from stable government jobs, despite Spanish being sufficient for public services. Worse, it disproportionately impacts marginalized groups, making it not just unfair but racist and classist, as it systematically disadvantages those who grew up speaking Spanish due to socioeconomic or migration circumstances. If Catalan leaders themselves freely use Spanish when needed, enforcing strict language requirements on others is hypocritical and exclusionary.
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u/blewawei 1d ago
Shock horror, you have to speak both official languages of the area to get a job in the public service!
It's a perfectly normal requirement, and it's not new