POLITICAL ALTERNATIVES ON THE RECOGNITION OF OWN LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS, AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES IN THE INTERPRETATION OR REFORM OF THE SPANISH CONSTITUTION

Spain is a country with twelve autochthonous languages. The modern Spanish nation-state, born with the bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century, officially denied this diversity and imposed Castilian as the only official language of the whole country. The current Spanish Constitution is an attempt to recognize Spanish linguistic diversity and establish a system of linguistic rights for speakers of Spanish languages other than Castilian. However, the system is hierarchical, unequal and complex, and is subject to criticism and political questioning from different positions.