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As regards cross-border exchanges, a subject where the
states have a tendency to appear more restrictive because they consider that it affects
the central nucleus of their sovereign competencies and their territorial integrity, the
Spanish Declaration accepted the two obligations provided for in Article 14, consisting
in trying to conclude bilateral and multilateral agreements with states having territories
where the same language as in the territories of the state is spoken, in order to foster
contacts between citizens who use the same language; and to favour cooperation
between substate communities of different states with a common language.
The Spanish Declaration attached to the ratification device
does not include anything in relation with the control measures of the fulfilment of the
obligations assumed by reason of the European Charter. This is due to the fact that the
control mechanism established in Part IV of the Charter and which implies the
presentation of periodical reports is not optional, and even the possibility of reserving
the application of this control mechanism is excluded from it.
5. Conclusions: The possibilities for application of the European Charter in
Spain
From what we have explained in this work we may conclude
that the ratification of the European Charter for Minority Languages by Spain has
basically been made to the highest degree as regards the assumption of obligations,
with some remarkable exceptions in the field of university education and in that of the
financing of the expenses that the use of regional or minority languages causes in the
media. But we have to remember that, as most parliamentary groups that participated
in the debate on the ratification of the European Charter expressed, it has never been
understood as a means of enlarging the contents of linguistic rights established by the
block of constitutionality and the different autonomic laws on linguistic normalisation. In
fact, in other European states, the text of the Charter has been received much more
coldly than in ours, from the usual French reticence to every conception that may alter
the Jacobin-centralist conception of the state, to the curious German Declaration which
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