Regional Madrid president Esperanza Aguirre has announced that, from the next academic year, parents will be able to choose for their children to be educated in Catalan, and, if there is sufficent demand, a Catalan school will be built, that will be named after former Cataluña president, Josep Tarradellas.

Ms Aguirre was speaking in Lleida, where she told an audience of PP sympathisers "my dear friends, let nobody in Cataluña accuse you of not wanting or respecting Catalan culture. No one here has the right to hand out marks for being good or bad Catalans," she said in Castilian after starting her speech in rudimentary Catalan.

Children at the proposed school will also be taught Castilian to encourage bilingualism.