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Summer 2003


The Local application of Ofercat to the city of Tarragona, by Rosa Ibarz and Enric Garriga

The Ofercat Tarragona study was carried out between spring 2001 and spring 2002. The fieldwork was done between November and January of that period. In June of last year (2002) the results were presented publicly to the whole city, in an open meeting at the City Hall as were various press dossiers, and reports were subsequently published in some of the local news media. At the end of that year, a talk was given on the functioning of the programme at the Seminars on the language in the counties of Tarragona (27th - 29th November); at these Seminars a Power Point presentation was also given and in June, a part of the results that had not previously been made public were used in a talk in the socio-economic sector. The data that are presented here in this article constitute a summary of all the public presentations carried out during 2002.

 

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Summary

1. Tarragona: General background

2. Local justification

3. The usefulness of the tool for language planning

4. Main results: tables and graphs

5. The provision of Catalan in the Public Administration

6. The provision of Catalan in the economy and society sectors

7. The provision of Catalan in the media and health and education

8. Conclusions at local level

 

1. Tarragona: General background

Tarragona  is an industrial city and a centre for services, as well as a tourist resort and the capital of its province. It has been growing rapidly since the second half of the nineties. However, the Tarragona of today is the outcome of the social and economic evolution of the last four decades of the 20th century of a city of "soldiers and civil servants". As a result it has become the present-day centre of the petro-chemical industry (one of the top 3 in Europe), with many multinational companies and commercial chains, and, on the other hand, a large number of tourists much in evidence. The latter come to the city, basically, to see the Roman monuments, the beaches and the Universal Mediterranean tourist complex (Port Aventura). According to the latest census figures, issued on 4th April, 2002, the city has 119,353 inhabitants, although more realistic assessments speak of 140,000 inhabitants all told, given that over the last three years a large number of immigrants have arrived who do not yet appear in the official figures.

When preparing the Ofercat survey for the year 2001, the data we worked with were: 109,995 habitants on census with linguistic competence oscillating between 94.5 (understand Catalan) 73.5 (can speak Catalan), according to the 1996 census. As the Provincial capital it has all kinds of administrative offices: those of central government, the regional government, the provincial administration, as well as the county hall, local government offices and the law courts. Also, the services sector contains businesses and companies of all sorts.

The anatomy of the city is peculiar and has been decisive in shaping the current situation. What we find is a densely populated urban area and a series of separate nuclei (ever decreasing in number, because of the constant building) in the form of the Ponent (Western) and Llevant (Eastern) districts. Historically, this structure has led to the isolation of these suburbs: they have been separate nuclei of population, with separate sociolinguistic stories. Thus, the suburbs in the Ponent grew out of the massive influx of migrants from elsewhere in Spain in the nineteen sixties and seventies, while the Llevant suburbs are the consequence of the move out from the city itself, in search of space and tranquillity.

Broadly speaking then we could conclude that what we have here is an urban area and (certain) residential suburbs where Catalan is obviously in use, but with other suburbs (the Ponent) formed by Spanish speakers, in the main, who have maintained Spanish as their everyday language. Only the use of Catalan by the schools has made it possible for the new generations in these latter districts to learn both the official languages (Catalan and Spanish) and to achieve a level of knowledge (not necessarily of use) at an acceptable level.

2. Local justification

When the pilot run of the Ofercat programme was carried out, five very different types of settlement were chosen, on the basis of sociolinguistic diversity, economic activity and number of inhabitants. At the same time, however, these populations —in addition to Santa Coloma de Gramenet— were seen representative of the main types of settlement in Catalonia at the present time.

3. The usefulness of the tool for language planning

As a result of the setting up of the Consortium for Language Normalisation (CPNL) some fourteen years ago, one of the aims that was articulated —in collaboration with other organisations and entities- was precisely the creation and setting up of instruments that would facilitate vigorous analysis, with the ultimate objective of obtaining reliable data that would allow planning of the most suitable action in a particular area and a given moment.

The Indexplà and the Programa per a l’anàlisi lingüística d’organitzacions (Organizations Linguistic Analysis Program) were the first tools of this type created by the CPNL, applicable to all kinds of organisations, individually. Now, Ofercat represents an important step forward in this growth process and improvement of tools. It consists of a programme that makes it possible to analyse a municipal area in its entirety. Or, if wished, a single district within the area can be examined. Thus the focus is shifted from the individual —Indexplà— to the collective —Ofercat providing real information on public use of the language from different viewpoints also applicable, obviously, to sociolinguistic studies.

With Ofercat the provision of Catalan is analysed —in this case— of a whole territorial ambit, based on indicators referring to: public administration, the social and economic spheres (primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors) ranging from industry to small businesses, including shopping centres and public services on the way) also health, education and the media, associations, sport and leisure. The result can be expressed by means of graphs and figures that allow us to quantify the degree or extent of the provision of Catalan in a particular place, whether territory, municipal area, or district within the latter.

With the graphs generated by the programme, one can begin to evaluate the result, from the most global to the most specific —by ambits. Naturally, the Ofercat indices can be taken as a reference to detect the strong and weak points of the territory under study (in terms of language provision) to then be able to plan actions to promote language normalisation in ambits and sectors where it is really needed. Another possibility that the programme offers, given that it can be applied periodically to the same territory, is to detect trends and developments in public use -both in cases where normalisation has been applied (detecting the effectiveness) and where it has not. In the latter case it will be detecting the natural trend of change in public use of the language in each of the ambits.

The CPNL plans take observations every five years, so that the second round of observation at Tarragona will be carried out in 2006 and the results obtained will be presented during 2007.

In terms of trends, from the sociolinguistic point of view, comparison of the results from the different territories where Ofercat has been applied also provides invaluable information for the drawing of a map of public use of the language. Then, with the successive observations, the direction of change since the first application of the programme can be detected. It should be said that commission that developed the programme drew on the expertise of technicians at the CPNL, the Institute of Catalan Sociolinguistics http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/dades (ISC, the organ of the Directorate General for Language Policy, DGPL) as well as an advisor in evaluation and IT. Accordingly, thanks to the ISC, the data provided by Ofercat has been cross-referenced with the data on population growth, the sociolinguistic data on knowledge and use of Catalan. The information was taken from the linguistic censuses, and from certain specific surveys on declared knowledge and use of the language. The last-mentioned sources were only available for Tarragona (1991 data), Manresa and the Barcelona suburb of Santa Coloma de Gramenet (figures for both populations obtained in 2000). These comparisons allow us to observe sociolinguistic trends and to conclude that knowledge, use and language provision are three variables which are closely interrelated and mutually condition each other.

4. Main results: tables and graphs

The Ofercat study of Tarragona was carried out between the spring of 2001 and spring 2002. The fieldwork was completed between November and January of that period. In June of last year, there was a public presentation of the results for the whole city, with an open meeting of the City Council and the production of several press dossiers, as well as the reports that were subsequently published by certain of the local media. At the end of the year, a paper was given on the functioning of the programme at Jornades sobre la Llengua a les Comarques de Tarragona (Conference on Language in the Counties of Tarragona) (27 to 29 November 2002); at this Conference a Power Point presentation was also made of the results first presented in June, and, a part of these results, never before in public circulation, was utilised to describe the socio-economic sector. All the data offered below represent a summary of these various different public presentations.

5. The provision of Catalan in the Public Administration

In the twenty years since the approval of the Language Normalisation Act (April 1983), the various levels and ramifications of the Public Administration has undergone adaptation to various degrees. Tarragona, as the provincial capital, has all the types of administration amply represented, ranging as it does from Central government (with delegations for all the ministries) to the strictly local (municipal), including on the way the Regional Autonomous (with territorial delegations of all departments of the Generalitat), the provisional (Delegation) and county level (Tarragona County Hall), as well as Justice (the law courts and offices, approximately 30 altogether). This coverage enables us to take a surprisingly complete X-ray of the different levels of provision of Catalan across the range.

The Autonomous and the local administration levels show extremely high indices, a mean of 98% and 96% respectively. In the case of the Autonomous level (the government of Catalonia) only the written communications [WRC] score lower than 90% —specifically 85%— as a result of the legal obligation of having available models of documents in Spanish for any citizens who might request them.

Figure 1. Local administration

Figure 1. Local administration

Figure 2. Autonomous administration

Figure 2. Autonomous administration


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