The Government approves the return of Catalan classes at Peking University.

China is once again officially offering formal Catalan language courses . Starting in the second semester of the 2025-2026 academic year, Beijing Foreign Studies University will resume offering courses that it already offered between 2015 and 2019, until the coronavirus cataclysm brought everything to a standstill. At that time, 180 Chinese students were enrolled in courses that, according to statements by the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, this Saturday in Beijing, promote the training of translators skilled in both languages and streamline "the exchange of students" between Catalonia and China. "Not only in the linguistic framework, but also in finance, economics, and trade," he added. According to the president , the reinstatement of formal Catalan language classes means that China "is getting closer to the Catalan reality, which is getting closer to the Spanish reality."

Beijing Foreign Studies University is China's leading language university and offers a curriculum that provides access to 100 languages. It has 15,000 students enrolled, half the number of students at the Universitat Autònoma (Autonomous University) but 5,000 more than the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Pompeu Fabra University). The reintroduction of Catalan into the classroom has been made possible thanks to an agreement with the Institut Ramon Llull and comes at a time when the Catalan language is at the center of political debate, due to the negotiations being conducted by Pedro Sánchez's government to achieve official status within the European Union.

The issue was a condition imposed by Junts per Catalunya (Junts per Catalunya) on the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) after the 2023 general elections to support Sánchez's investiture and the election of Francina Armengol as Speaker of Congress, but it remains blocked in Brussels due to a lack of support from other EU member states. The PP has made notable maneuvers to short-circuit any possible consensus.

On this point, Illa has maintained that the commitment remains firm: "I have had the opportunity to convey to the rector and his team the vision of the Spanish Government regarding the official languages and all the work being done to ensure that they are also official languages in Europe," the president stressed.

Xiao Zhang teaches Spanish and Catalan in the Department of Hispanic and Portuguese Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She previously studied History at the Autonomous University of Beijing and points out that for Chinese students who want to learn Catalan, the task "is not very difficult because they usually have a foundation in Spanish or English and there are grammatical similarities." The professor explains that the interest in learning Catalan in China is motivated by the fact that "Catalonia has very good universities," and knowing Catalan means having access to university education is easier. "Many exchange students who attend Catalan universities decide to study Catalan in advance," Zhang says.

On the second day of their trip to China, the delegation from the Generalitat (Catalan government) also traveled to the Huairou campus, north of Beijing, to visit the High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) and sign a collaboration agreement that will lead to improved technology at the Alba Synchrotron , located in Cerdanyola del Vallès and one of ten facilities of its kind in Europe. Alba, a third-generation synchrotron, will be able to benefit from the innovations used by HEPS, considered a fourth-generation facility, in its working protocols for these large microscopes for studying matter through particle acceleration. "We are at a different moment in history and we would like to collaborate," said Caterina Biscari, director of the Alba synchrotron, during the Catalan delegation's visit to the HEPS facilities.

This Saturday, Illa will also visit one of the Catalan company Roca's work centers in China. The sanitaryware company has nine factories in China, and two Roca Galleries in Beijing and Shanghai, each with an 800-square-meter display space for its products and services.

China is the main destination for Catalan exports in Asia and one of the main investors in Catalonia in recent years. More than 280 Catalan companies are present in the Chinese market, while more than 200 Chinese companies operate in Catalonia, according to figures from the Catalan government.