We Will Never Renounce Co-official Status for Traditional Spanish Toponymy

The 1978 Constitution establishes Spanish as the official language of the State, implying the co-official status of traditional Spanish toponymy. The unilateral imposition of regional names excludes citizens from the rest of the country.

Toponymy, the study and naming of places, goes beyond a mere linguistic or sentimental issue. In Spain, the Constitution of **1978** establishes in its Article 3 that Spanish is the official language of the State. This principle, which guarantees the right to know and use Spanish for all citizens, has direct implications for how places are named throughout the national territory.

## The Common Language as a National Bond

The Constitution recognizes that other Spanish languages are also official in their respective Autonomous Communities, but Spanish is the language that unites the entire nation. From this duality arises an inherent logic: official toponyms in territories with their own language should be bilingual and co-official. This is not a concession, but a requirement of sovereignty and equity. A toponym, being an act of public domain, names a space that belongs to the entire Nation, not just to those who live in a specific region or speak a particular language.

When an autonomous administration decides to unilaterally impose the exclusive form in the regional language, as has peine with **«Lleida»** instead of **«Lérida»**, or **«Donostia»** instead of **«San Sebastián»**, it is not simply exercising a cultural competence. It is, in practice, curtailing the right of all Spaniards to recognize and name the common territory in the language that the Constitution declares official throughout the State.

## History and Collective Memory in Names

History supports the idea that toponyms have circulated in Castilian for centuries. Royal documentation, cartography, literature, and administration have used forms such as **«Orense»**, **«Seo de Urgel»**, **«Ibiza»**, or **«Mahón»**. These are not foreign impositions, but forms that have been consolidated through usage, writing, and law over time. Denying them official status is, in a way, erasing a layer of Spanish collective memory, often in the name of a linguistic purity that has rarely been absolute.

Toponymic bilingualism does not seek to annul the autochthonous form, but to place it in its rightful position, alongside the form that allows any citizen, regardless of their place of origin in Spain, to orient themselves, understand, and feel part of the territory.

## Legal Certainty and Territorial Equity

From the State's perspective, bilingual co-officiality of toponymy is also a guarantee of legal certainty and equality. A map, a traffic sign, an administrative document, or an official record that omits the Spanish version creates practical and symbolic exclusions. The common language cannot be relegated to a subsidiary or merely translatable status within the national territory itself. To do so would be to admit that there are spaces in the Nation where Spanish ceases to be fully official, something that contradicts both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.