Lunch with Miquel Strubell

Lunch with Miquel Strubell

The other day Joan Font, Peter Harris and I had a very informative lunch with Miquel Strubell.

Miquel holds a degree in Psychology and Physiology from the University of Oxford, holds a Master's Degree in Educational Psychology from the University of London, and a Bachelor's in Psychology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has done research on school and family bilingual issues and has written about language policies, language planning and related topics.

Folowing the death of Franco in 1975, after a period of much discussion and negotiation, the new Constitution of Spain divided the country into 17 autonomous regions. And now, after a period of 35 years of dictatorship under Franco, the Catalans, the Basques and the Galicians were allowed to be taught in their native language, as well as being allowed to use it in official buildings and institutions, although not necessarily in places like the courtrooms.

In 1980 Miquel was appointed the head of the Linguistic Normalization Service of the Generalitat de Catalunya. He has also been director of the Institute of Catalan Sociolinguistics. He was secretary of the Social Council of the Catalan Language, of which he has been a member since 2005; and he was a member of the board of directors, and then vice president, of the Consortium for Linguistic Normalization.

Having been very involved in making the Catalan Language more present and relevant in everyday life, in the mid Eighties Miquel also became instrumental in assisting the Welsh Language to improve its status in schools and society in Wales.

Brandon Jones