El pluralisme lingüístic arriba a l'Administració perifèrica de l'Estat. Comentari a l'Ordre Ministrerial de 20 de juliol de 1990

Resum

More than ten years after the passage of the first statutes of autonomy in Spain, the Ministerial Order for Public Administration, dated July 20, 1990, represents an important step forward in the central government's acceptance of linguistic pluralism. Until now, the central government had been the branch of government which had shown greatest reluctance in this area. On the one hand, the statutes of autonomy have been considered to be norms of territorial efficiency, binding upon the whole of the public sector within the respective autonomous regions. On the other, the Constitutional Tribunal has handed down case law since 1983 concerning the role of central government organizations in the protection of languages other than Castilian. Taken together, these are the two legal factors which have influenced the adoption of the norms studied in this paper. In the second section of the paper, the author sets forth the autonomous communities having coofficial language status in which the July 20th Order is enforced, and examines in greater detail the measures comprising the Order. The Order does not affect all civil service personnel. The principal measures of the Order are: 1) determine which jobs are bilingual (guarantee a series of jobs manned by personnel with knowledge of the co-official language in the respective autonomous community); 2) give special favourable consideration to language knowledge in filling positions that require passing an exam (select civil servants having the best language background for the administrative positions which have the greatest direct contact with the public); 3) give courses in the co-official languages for personnel working for the central government in offices located in the various autonomous communities.