The reported zero score for Valencian-language newspapers is not merely a dispute over spelling preferences. If public-grant criteria displace the standards of the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua (AVL), the administration needs to state clearly which rule it is applying and why.
On 9 November, elDiario.es reported that newspapers writing in Valencian according to AVL standards received zero out of 40 in one part of a competitive grant scheme. The outlet said the Directorate General for Language Policy had instead prioritized a decree from Carlos Mazón’s previous government on Valencian use in the administration.
That distinction matters because the report describes the AVL as the statutory body responsible for standardising Valencian. A grant call for media outlets should not, without a clear explanation, turn an administrative-language guideline into a criterion that gives no points to applicants following the institutional language authority’s standards. The issue is not that administrative usage rules can never matter; it is that their scope and status must be explicit when they determine a competitive score.
The available material has important limits. It does not include the full grant rules, score sheets, final award decision, number of affected outlets, or complete responses from the Directorate General, the regional government or the AVL. It therefore cannot establish illegality or calculate a financial loss.
It does support a narrower and necessary demand: the administration should publish the criterion used, its basis and how it was applied consistently across applications. When public money and a statutory language authority meet in the same assessment, traceable rules are not a technical extra. They are the basis for a defensible competition.
Source: elDiario.es.
Sources
- elDiario.es · Source date: 2026-11-09
Independent editorial content. WUA is not affiliated with any political party. 2026-11-10