Cabassers residents may again be asked whether the municipality should begin formal steps to change its official name from Cabacés to Cabassers, after a new request was submitted to the ERC-led town council, according to Junts councillor Carles Prats.

The dispute concerns the spelling used in official records for the Priorat village of about 300 people. Prats says the Catalan form, Cabassers, should be made official, while Mayor Jaume-Josep Pujals says any final move should follow a local consultation.

The Administrative Court No. 1 in Tarragona has dismissed an earlier legal challenge by Junts without considering the substance of the naming dispute, El Món reported on Saturday. The court found that a previous request had already become final because the available appeals had not been used at the time.

Earlier request closed without an appeal

According to the court account reported by El Món, Junts formally requested the official use of Cabassers on 29 September 2022. The Ajuntament, or town council, rejected the request on 21 October 2022.

  • In 2024, the council told residents that the name would be changed, according to Prats.
  • The council later withdrew from that position after meeting residents, he said.
  • Junts took the matter to the administrative court in January 2025.
  • The court rejected that case on procedural grounds because the 2022 decision had become final.

Prats said Junts had decided against appealing to the Tribunal Superior de Justícia de Catalunya, Catalonia's High Court of Justice. He said the new request was made by a person who had not previously submitted an application on the issue.

“We have chosen this route because we believe it involves far fewer risks than debating with the High Court of Justice whether a mayoral decree is null and void,” Prats told El Món.

He said that, if the council does not respond, the applicant could bring a further administrative case in Tarragona seeking compliance with the rules governing the municipality's official name.

Mayor proposes a residents' survey

Pujals told El Món that there was no linguistic disagreement over the standard Catalan spelling, Cabassers. He said the currently official form reflected an orthographic spelling used historically and reinstated under Franco's dictatorship in 1939.

The mayor criticised the legal and media confrontation pursued by Junts, saying it had divided opinion in the village. He proposed using the municipal regulations' participatory-survey option to ask residents whether they support starting the procedure to correct the place name.

“The name of the village would already be corrected if he were a normal person,” Pujals said, referring to Prats.

For residents, the immediate issue is whether the council responds to the new application and, if it chooses to pursue the mayor's proposal, whether it opens a local survey on starting the renaming process.

The Generalitat's register of interest groups lists Cabassers.org, for which Prats is named as spokesperson, as a network whose declared purpose includes scrutinising official Catalan place names and seeking the use of standard forms. Its stated objective cites Article 18.1 of Catalonia's 1998 Language Policy Law.

Primary sources: serveiscentrals.justicia.gencat.cat. Reported by elmon.cat, CENDOJ, cabassers.net, elliberal.cat, El Debate, Cabassers.org, tarragonadigital.com, vlex.es, El Món.