Documents Plurals

PLURAL - PAPERS MANIFESTO

(Passports, identity cards, driving licences, foreign residency cards and all other personal identity documents in the languages of the State)

Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution astates that Castilian is the official language of the Spanish State; proclaims that the other Spanish languages will also be official in their respective Autonomous Communities [i.e., regions] in accordance with the regions' statute of autonomy; and declares that Spain's linguistic diversity shall be the object of special respect and protection.

Despite this constitutional injunction of respect and protection for the State's plurilingual character, the languages of Spain other than Castilian, which are spoken in a territory inhabited by more than 40 per cent of the Spanish population, have been absent for 20 years from a number of domains of great symbolic and practical importance. Among these domains are the citizens' personal papers (national identity card, passport and the driving licence) and the papers of foreign residents - which, in a time of increasing immigration such as the present one, has acquired a hitherto unparalleled importance.

This practice differs from that of other plurilingual democracies in Europe and the rest of the world, which reflect internal linguistic diversity in their papers. This allows citizens that speak different languages to recognise themselves in their papers, but also creates the opportunity for all citizens and foreign residents, regardless of their usual language, to see the society's linguistic pluralism in their papers, and hence to accept it as a normal fact.

In this way, in Belgium French and Dutch are both present in identity cards and passports, together with German, even if the latter is only spoken by 1 per cent of the population. Finland uses Finish and Swedish in all papers, Canada does the same with English and French, and all personal papers in Switzerland are written in the four official languages (French, German, Italian and Romansch, the later being spoken, as the case of German in Belgium, only by 1 per cent of the population). In all these cases, plurilinguism is automatically present in all papers, including passports, without the need for a specific request by the individual and independently from the place where these papers are issued.

As Spanish citizens that speak languages other than Castilian we want to recognise ourselves in our personal documents, and we also want the rest of Spain to know and accept the plurilingual character of our shared state.

Therefore, taking advantage of the European Year of Languages, convened by the European Union and the Council of Europe to promote a consciousness on the wealth of linguistic diversity and to encourage multilingualism in the European Union, we want to call upon our political leaders to take all measures necessary to ensure that, in the shortest time possible, all Spanish personal papers display a linguistic regime similar to that enforced by the other plurilingual democracies, allowing the effective application of the constitutional mandate of respect and protection of the Spanish linguistic diversity.