A PLANNED bill by the Catalan regional government to promote the Catalan language threatens to discriminate against the many people in Catalonia—nearly half the population—who are not ethnic Catalans, and may make it harder for Catalonians of whatever origin to compete in the world outside. Proceedings in courts and in central government's offices in Catalonia, which have hitherto been in Castilian Spanish, will now have to be conducted in Catalan as well. And private companies will be required, in various circumstances, to use Catalan alone.

For the regional government of Jordi Pujol, whose mainstream Catalan nationalist party provides crucial support for Jose Maria Aznar's ruling People's Party in the national parliament in Madrid, the proposed new law should right the wrongs of centuries of linguistic persecution. But it could also upset the delicate bilingual balance that has existed since 1983, when both languages—Castilian and Catalan—became compulsory in schools and government offices could operate in either tongue.

The law's advocates argue that positive discrimination is still needed to make sure that Catalan will never again face the prospect of extinction. During General Franco's 40-year era, speaking anything but Castilian was frowned upon in every corner of Spain. He scrapped laws recognising Catalan and Basque that had been passed by the previous republican government. Notices in schools urged children to hablar cristiano (“speak Christian”)—synonymous, in Franco's view, with Castilian. The Catalan language began to fade.

Spain's new constitution of 1978, three years after Franco's death, divided Franco's centralised country into 17 regions, granted privileges to those parts (the Basque country, Catalonia and Galicia) with historic identities of their own, made Castilian pre-eminent as Spain's official language, but gave other languages—principally Catalan, Basque, Valencian (a dialect of Catalan) and Galician—equal status in areas where they were spoken. Regional governments were allowed to determine their linguistic mix. The Catalan law of 1983 seemed to keep most speakers of both tongues happy.

The heralded tilt in favour of Catalan in Catalonia is rattling the 40%-plus of the region's people who are of Spanish descent. But it worries quite a few Catalans, too, who fear the law marks a departure from their tolerant traditions—and could make it harder for their children to make their way in the wider world. Some local writers have issued a manifesto in Catalan saying that neither language should have supremacy. “I write in Castilian”, said one, “because it is an international language spoken by 300m people and I want as many of them to buy my books as possible.”

Language is an issue in the Basque country, too. There the Basque government is heavily promoting Euskera, the Basque tongue, which is less widely spoken in the region than Catalan is in Catalonia (and is harder for Spanish-speakers to learn). But the Basques have much further to go before expunging Spanish. The Catalans risk locking themselves into a linguistic ghetto.