The Education Minister of the Valencian Government, José Antonio Rovira, (PP) has boasted today that the consultation on the base language in schools has been an “exercise in freedom,” but the result shows that he has failed in his attempt to marginalize Catalan and impose Spanish.

In the overall count presented by the Valencian government, Catalan has prevailed with 50.53% of the votes, that is, by just over one percentage point. But if only the Catalan-speaking regions are taken into account, the figure rises to 68 percent in favor of Catalan.

The Valencian Country has always been divided into two linguistic areas that correspond to medieval repopulation. The coast, repopulated by Catalans, continues to speak the language while in the interior, repopulated by Aragonese, Spanish is spoken. In historically Spanish-speaking regions, Catalan is not used in schools.

Some media have fallen into Rovira’s trap and have not hesitated to headline that Catalan had won by a narrow margin. But reviewing the map of the entire Valencian Country, it is clearly seen how the Spanish-speaking regions—Bajo Segura (4.75%), Plana de Utiel (7.04%), Valle de Cofrentes (12.8%), Alto Vinalopó (16.83%), etc.—skew the result in favor of Spanish.

Meanwhile, Catalan has prevailed decisively and overwhelmingly in the bulk of the regions, except for the metropolitan areas of València and Alacant-Elx. Even so, in the two metropolitan areas, pending the detailed count of votes, everything indicates that Catalan has prevailed in public schools and Spanish in state-subsidized private schools.

The region where Catalan has obtained the best result is Alt Maestrat (94.71%), followed by Els Ports (93.20%) and El Comtat (87.63%).

It has been a great surprise that the demand for classes in Catalan has also been the priority option in La Serranía (51.97%), which is part of the Spanish-speaking regions. It should be remembered that until now there were no Catalan classes in this region, which now requests them by majority vote of its families.