How to Kill a Language: Planning, Diglossia, Bi-normativism, the Internet... and Galician.

The recognition of the Galician language (Galego) as the official regional language, together with Spanish in the Autonomous Community of Galicia (Spanish Constitution, 1981), and further ratification by Spain of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2001 (Council of Europe, ECRML), gave legal protection and enabled the promotion of the use of Galician at all levels of education, in the media and public services. The number of Galician speakers, however, has been declining for the past forty years (Instituto Galego de Estatística, IGE 2014) with no indication for a change of course. The study focuses and aims at explaining the dichotomy between officialisation and accelerated decline of the Galician language since the post-Franco era (Skobel, 2010, p.21) and 2021, by analysing contributing factors such as historical, political, sociolinguistic, historiographic, educational policies, internal tensions, fast socio-economic and technological changes. An epistemological approach suggests political change as a solution.