The Catalan and Basque languages in Spain have suffered at best neglect and at worst repression from the majority Spanish-speaking community. For a time they were banned from schools. In spite of this they have retained their vitality as home languages. The low and negative status accorded to them has, however, been a source of resentment, anger, and divisiveness. The immersion programs in Catalan and Basque that have now been established can be viewed as support by the dominant linguistic group for these languages and their cultures, as a way of making up for past wrongs, as acts of reconciliation and attempts to heal political and social divisions. They can also be seen as undeniably demonstrating an awareness by parents of the potential political, social, and economic advantages their children might gain from being bilingual in these two contexts.

Josep Maria Artigal describes the immersion programs established in Catalan for Spanish-speaking children. In national terms this is an example of the majority language group using immersion as a means for learning a minority group language. However, within Catalonia itself, although Catalan remains a lower-status language, the situation has changed dramatically over the last two decades, as Artigal vividly describes. Catalan has been reinstated as an LI medium of instruction for speakers of Catalan, and has come to be used as an L2 medium of instruction for many Spanish-speaking children in newly established immersion programs.