Identidad lingüística e identidad nacional en España: “derechos y deberes”

Castilian is the official Spanish language of the state. All Spaniards have the duty to know it and the right to use it: thus begins the Article 3 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (still current today) and here starts our reflection about the thin limit between duty and right to know and to use both castilian and the other languages of Spain that the Constitution defines also [...] official in the respective autonomous communities, in accordance with their Statutes. Our analysis starts with the comparison between Article 4 and 3 of Spanish Constitutions of 1931 and 1978, which are the first laws to grant legal officiality to castilian language. Officiality and co-officiality: two concepts that along the years suffered the discrepancy that sometimes exists between the “duty” to know and to use a co-official language and the “right” to be an official citizen, that is, between the obligation to protect an undiscussed linguistic identity and the freedom to declare an unquestionable national identity.