Aragonese and Catalan are listed as “proper languages” of Aragon in its Statute of Autonomy, although they do not have the rank of co-officials. It is estimated that some 25,000 people know how to speak Aragonese, to which are added another 20,000 who understand and know it but do not express themselves in it. And they declare that some 17,000 people know how to write in Aragonese. Regarding Catalan, there are some 55,000 speakers of this language in Aragon, in the eastern border with Cataloniaand those who understand it would reach 90,000.
The Government of Aragon, chaired by the socialist Javier Lamban, published in 2022 a decree regulating the use of their own languages in the field of public administrations. The objective was “to enable citizens to use the languages of Aragon in the public sphere, in the areas of predominant historical use and to comply with the provisions of current legislation”.
The aforementioned decree, published in the Official Gazette of Aragon, indicated that the public administrations of Aragon “will promote the knowledge of their own languages by all their employees”.
It specified that knowledge of the languages of Aragon “may be assessed in the selection procedures called by the public administrations of Aragon, when the characteristics of the job and the nature of the functions to be carried out so require”.
It added that, for this, the Administration of the Autonomous Community “will arbitrate the appropriate measures for the voluntary training of its workers in the knowledge of the languages and linguistic modalities of Aragon”.