“ALWAYS REMEMBER this, Sepharad / Keep safe the bridges of dialogue / and take care to understand and keep / the different reasons and languages of your children.” In 1960 Salvador Espriu, a Catalan poet, used these words to remind Spain of its historical diversity (using the country’s Hebrew name to evoke the days before it expelled Jews in 1492). Espriu’s stance was bold at the time. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship forbade official use of any language but Castilian Spanish.

But on August 17th this year Francina Amengol, just elected president of the lower house of Spain’s parliament, read the verse in Catalan in her maiden speech. Sprinkling in Basque and Galician too, she announced that the chamber would thenceforth allow the use of those three languages.

Spain’s election in July left neither its right- nor left-wing alliances with a majority. So Ms Armengol was elected with the support of five regional separatist parties. Her Socialist party, led by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, hopes to persuade those groups to keep him in office. Shortly before the vote for the parliament’s presiding officers, the Socialists struck a deal with both Catalan nationalist parties to elect Ms Armengol. (They have not yet agreed to back Mr Sánchez.)

Among other promises was the commitment to change the language policy in the Congress. Ms Armengol is a former president of the Balearic Islands, where varieties of Catalan are spoken. She is an outspoken proponent of federalism for Spain, where language conflicts stoke intense passions: they are a proxy for old conflicts over the power of the Castilian-speaking centre versus the rest. Some find the deal “grotesque”, as a leader of the hard-right nationalist Vox party put it. For them, the offence is twofold: rewarding separatists, and supporting languages that those separatists use to divide Spain.

Néstor Rego, the lone MP for the Galician Nationalist Bloc, scoffs at such views. “They can’t understand that if you speak Spanish because it’s your language, I speak Galician because it’s mine. They think we do it…to piss them off.” He describes Ms Armengol’s change as powerfully symbolic. Although over 90% of Galicians can speak the language, only about half do so regularly—a failure of “self-esteem”, he says. Perhaps hearing their language spoken in lawmaking could change that.

As part of the deal with the nationalists, Mr Sánchez has also requested official status for Catalan, Basque and Galician in the European Union. This is trickier. The rules let each country make one language official for EU purposes. Even countries sympathetic to Spain’s plight might balk at the cost, and the precedent. Other countries have minority languages too. There are already 24 official ones, and the translating and interpreting services of the European Commission employ over 2,000 people at a cost of €350m a year (0.2% of the EU budget).

Back in Madrid it is not yet clear how the policy will work. The Senate, which represents the regions, already allows the use of other languages, but only in certain proceedings. Ms Armengol says she will consult all the parties. The conservative People’s Party, in contrast to Vox’s hard opposition, says it will await details.

Javier Cercas, a novelist who lives in Barcelona, says he is “in favour of Catalan in the Congress, and everywhere.” He is a fierce opponent of Catalan separatism, but a proud adoptive Catalan himself (hailing from Extremadura, in the south-west). In his column in El País, a daily, he argues against the logic that if you speak a language you are a nationalist, and therefore a separatist. The way to fight that idea is for Spanish patriots to celebrate all of the country’s languages: “it is a tremendous error to leave the promotion and defence of Catalan in the hands of the secessionists…there is no better way to refute separatism than in Catalan.” ■