The Languages of the Valencian Educational System: The Results of Two Decades of Language Policy 1 José Luis Blas Arroyo Departamento de Filolgia Ingelsa y Romanica, Jaume I University, 12080 Castellon, Spain For some decades now, as a consequence of changes in the politics of Spain, the compulsory education system in the autonomous Spanish region known as the Comunidad Valenciana has offered a varied programme of bilingual education: Span- ish and Valenciano, an autochthonous variety of Catalan, alternate according to various curricular programmes as the main teaching languages. This paper examines the objec- tives of each of these programmes, as well as data which serve to evaluate the results generated by the application of the said programmes, i.e. history, enrolment details, geographic distribution, infrastructure, teacher training, etc. All these variables coexist within a very specific sociolinguistic context, which is unlike that of other bilingual regions of Spain. The existence of two clearly differentiated linguistic regions, tied in with the progressive abandonment of Valenciano over the last few centuries, is reflected in the lack of uniformity in the state of bilingual education in this region. Nevertheless, even the strongest critics concede that there has been a qualitative advance away from a monolingual model to the present situation where the teaching of Valenciano and teaching in Valenciano have an undeniable presence. Introduction Historic and demographic background The Autonomous Community of Valencia is situated on the east coast of Spain with an area of approximately 23,305 km 2 and a population of roughly 4 million. Due to historic reasons, its three provinces (Castellón, Valencia and Alicante) have a unique linguistic distribution that is reflected in two clearly distinguish- able areas. As a result, most of the people of the inland regions of the País Valenciano – a name by which this Autonomous Community is often called – may be considered monolingual Castilian Spanish speakers, while over the centuries the strip of coastal land has developed a social bilingualism in which Spanish and Valencian – a variety of Catalan – live side by side. The term ‘Valenciano’ has special significance for the local population, 2 in spite of the fact that from a scien- tific point of view, there is no doubt about its genetic unity with Catalan. This is why in this paper we will use the former (Valenciano) instead of the later (Catalan). The reason for this situation may be traced back to the region’s Reconquest. Settlers who colonised the territories had different geographic and linguistic origins: Aragonese in the first case, and Catalans in the second. 3 When the Cata- lan-Aragonese and Castilian crowns were unified, the Reino de Valencia entered a period of sharp decline, thus bringing to an end an age of tremendous economic, political and cultural splendour: the 15th century. For centuries the local language had no more status than a commonly spoken dialect. The middle classes gradually stopped using it in an attempt to emulate the upper classes who 1367-0050/02/06 0318-21 $20.00/0 ©2002 J. L. Blas Arroyo International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Vol. 5, No. 6, 2002 318 Languages of the Valencian Educational System BEB 168