Website in Valencian: when to make it bilingual and how to do it well

We have not found any law that requires a private company to have its website in Valencian, the language that is official alongside Spanish in the Valencian Community. We have found laws that require you to serve anyone who writes to you in Valencian without discrimination. If you sell to consumers, they also require you to give them the pre-contract information in Valencian when they ask for it. A bilingual website pays off when a real share of your clients buy in Valencian, and it works with one URL per language, hreflang “ca” and someone who checks every text.

Below you will find each rule split into obligation, right and good practice, and the 2026 grants with their status as of 2 October. Also how people search, the technical set-up, a table to decide where to start and a translation quality checklist.

This guide does not replace your adviser. When something is our interpretation of a rule, we mark it as a cautious approach. When it is our own working method, as our approach.

No law we have found requires you to translate your website, but you must serve clients properly in Valencian

It is worth separating 3 things that often get mixed up: what the law obliges you to do, your client’s rights and what is good practice.

There is no general obligation. The Statute of Autonomy (Estatuto de Autonomía) declares Valencian and Spanish (castellano, also called Castilian) official and recognises everyone’s right to use them. It also prohibits discriminating against anyone because of their language (art. 6). Law 4/1983 on the use and teaching of Valencian (Ley 4/1983, de uso y enseñanza del valenciano) extends that right to private dealings (art. 2). But it gives the task of promoting Valencian in commercial activity to the public authorities, not to companies (arts. 5 and 33).

We have not found any rule in the BOE (the Official State Gazette) or the DOGV (the Valencian Official Gazette) that requires a private company to publish its website, leaflets or signs in Valencian.

Your client’s right: to use their language without being served worse. A message in Valencian has full effect, without discrimination or any “requirement for a translation” (Law 4/1983, art. 3). And the Valencian Consumer Statute (Estatuto de las personas consumidoras) spells this out for the people who buy from you.

That Statute is Law 1/2011, now consolidated in Legislative Decree 1/2019 (Decreto Legislativo 1/2019). Its art. 8 recognises the right to use either official language (8.1). Since 1 January 2023, art. 8.3 prohibits refusing to serve someone, or serving them improperly, because of the official language they use (Law 8/2022, art. 155).

Breaching it is an infringement: violating language rights or refusing service for that reason (art. 74, sections 10 and 11 of the consolidated text). These are minor infringements (art. 75), with fines of €150 to €10,000 (art. 76). 2 minor infringements in one year count as a serious one (art. 75.2.i). The latest reform, Law 5/2025, keeps them.

The specific obligations are few, and almost all apply only when the client asks. This table brings them together with what they mean for your website:

Law 10/2025 on customer service (Ley 10/2025, de servicios de atención a la clientela) has been in force since 28 December 2025. It also has language rules, but it does not affect most SMEs. It applies to water, gas, electricity, passenger transport, postal services, telecommunications and financial services, whatever their size (art. 2.1). It also applies to anyone selling to consumers with at least 250 employees, more than €50 million in turnover or more than €43 million on the balance sheet (art. 2.2).

Those companies must train the staff who deal with customers in the co-official languages (art. 9.2). They have 12 months from its entry into force, on 28 December 2025, to adapt (sole transitional provision).

Cautious approach for an SME: if someone on your team writes Valencian well, reply in Valencian to anyone who writes to you in it. If not, reply in Spanish just as quickly and with the same care. And never ask a client to write to you in Spanish.

The 2026 grants for a website in Valencian are municipal, and almost all have closed

On 2 October 2026 we searched the National Grants Database (Base de Datos Nacional de Subvenciones, BDNS) for the 2025 and 2026 calls on Valencian. There is no line from the Generalitat, the Valencian regional government, that pays for a company’s website, signage or translation. Its 2026 calls go to town councils, media outlets, local festival programmes and universities.

These are the ones that affect the website of a business in Castellón or Valencia. At the end, the Generalitat’s line for town councils, which does not pay grants to companies:

Many municipalities in the Province of Valencia also hold awards for the use of Valencian in local commerce. The Valencia Provincial Council (Diputación de Valencia) pays them 80% of those awards, up to €3,200 per municipality. They reward what you have already done, such as signs, documents, marketing and social media, but they do not fund a new website.

In the Province of Castellón we have not found any other 2026 call for businesses in the BDNS. Castellón City Council’s call was approved on 2 October 2025: if you are interested in the next one, ask its language standardisation service.

Cautious approach: treat the grant as a discount, not as the funding for the website. In Valencia, the action had to be carried out before the grant was awarded. In addition, the text had to meet the criteria of the council’s language service (Servicio de Normalització Lingüística), and texts that were almost identical in the 2 languages did not count (2026 rules, rules 8 and 12). The lists of admitted applicants are published on the procedure page.

One detail of those rules is a useful guide even if you do not apply for the grant. On a bilingual website, the home page had to be in Valencian or let visitors choose Valencian before going in. General grants for building a website are covered in website grants in 2026.

In Castellón and Valencia almost everyone understands Valencian, but how much it is used varies a lot by area

The Generalitat’s latest full survey is from 2021, with fieldwork from October to December that year (summary of results). The Generalitat is currently running the Enquesta 2026 survey, with no results published yet. These are the 2021 figures for the Valencian-speaking areas of Castellón and Valencia:

The last 2 columns are our own sum of 3 survey answers: “always”, “usually” and “more Valencian than Spanish”. That is why some figures differ by a tenth from the summary’s map.

In all 3 areas, more than 8 in 10 people understand Valencian. But the share who mostly speak it in shops is 1 in 10 in Valencia and l’Horta and 3 in 10 in the Castellón districts (comarcas). In the Riberas, la Costera and the Camps de Túria and Morvedre, it is 4 in 10.

Outside those areas are the mainly Spanish-speaking municipalities, such as Segorbe, Requena or Utiel (Law 4/1983, art. 36).

Our approach: the Valencian version is not there so that people understand you. It is there for people who prefer to deal with you in their own language. That is why your best data is your own: which language people use to write to you, call you and leave you reviews.

3 free tests tell you whether your clients search for you in Valencian

Google does not publish how many people search in Valencian. You can check it yourself with free tools, in this order.

1. Google autocomplete. Open an incognito window on google.es and type your service and your town in Valencian, letter by letter: “fisioteràpia castelló” (physiotherapy), “gestoria vila-real” (administrative agency), “advocat herències” (inheritance lawyer). Note what Google suggests and repeat in Spanish.

We did it on 2 October 2026 with Google autocomplete for Spain. With “clínica dental castelló”, almost all the suggestions switched to “castellón”. With “advocat herències”, all the ones that included a town were in Catalonia. With “dentista vila-real”, Vila Real in Portugal and in Ourense also appeared.

It is not volume data, just a clue to how Google completes searches. But it leaves 2 lessons we come back to below: autocomplete mixes Valencian and Spanish forms, and some place names are shared with other places.

2. Keyword Planner. It is inside Google Ads and needs an account that has been set up. Use “Get search volume and forecasts”, paste each search in both languages and limit the location to your province or your district.

You will not find Valencian among the languages. Google Ads offers Catalan, with the code ca, the same code the ISO standard assigns to Valencian. And volumes are rounded. The language does not change the volume: what counts is the exact word and the location. Our approach: compare pairs, not single figures. In a province, the difference between “advocat” and “abogado” (lawyer) says more than the number for each.

3. Search Console and your inbox. If you already have a website, open the Performance report, Queries tab, and look for Valencian words: “preu” (price), “cita” (appointment), “horari” (opening hours), “advocat” (lawyer), “botiga” (shop). Then count which language your latest emails, WhatsApp messages and reviews came in.

Each version uses the official place name, and your Business Profile uses just one name

Official municipality names are set by the Consell, the Valencian government, by decree. The Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua gathers them in a list updated on 23 April 2026. For the readers of this guide, these are the most used:

• Castelló de la Plana / Castellón de la Plana. It has been bilingual since Decree 187/2024.
• València. It has been the only official form since Decree 16/2017. In December 2025 the City Council asked to change it to “Valéncia/Valencia”, and the Acadèmia issued an unfavourable report on 27 February 2026. The Consell decides, and as of 2 October we have not found the decree.
• Vila-real, Almassora and la Vall d’Uixó only have an official form in Valencian. Borriana / Burriana and Benicàssim / Benicasim are bilingual.
• Castelló, on its own, has been the official name of another municipality, in la Ribera Alta, since Decree 112/2020.

Our approach for the pages:

• In the Valencian version, the Valencian forms: València, Castelló de la Plana, Vila-real. In the Spanish version, the ones your clients use, such as Castellón or Valencia.
• The full name the first time. “Castelló de la Plana”, not just “Castelló”, so you do not compete with places of the same name.
• The postal address, identical in the 2 versions, on your Business Profile and in the structured data. It is data, not a text to translate. We explain this in our law firm website guide.

Your Google Business Profile does not allow the name to be repeated in 2 languages. The Business Profile guidelines prohibit it, even if your sign shows it that way. The name must be the real one, the one on your shop front, your website and your stationery.

The description is a single field of up to 750 characters. Our approach: write it in the language most people contact you in and link the profile to that version of the website. Reply to each review in the client’s language, as we explain in how to get Google reviews.

The technical side: one URL per language, hreflang “ca” and no half-and-half pages

Google’s general rules for multilingual websites are in the languages section of the industrial company website guide. They are one URL per language, no redirecting by IP, reciprocal hreflang and subdirectories. Here is what changes with Valencian.

In hreflang, Valencian is “ca”

In the IANA language subtag registry, “ca” means both Catalan and Valencian. The ISO 639 standard does the same: “Catalan; Valencian”. Since 2007 there has also been the variant “valencia”, which lets you write “ca-valencia” or “ca-ES-valencia”.

Watch out for 2 codes that look logical and are not. “va” is not a registered language code at all. And “val” is, but it belongs to Vehes, another language.

Google only supports in hreflang ISO 639-1 language codes, with optional ISO 3166-1 region and ISO 15924 script. And it adds that it does not support other codes, such as es-419. As “valencia” is not in those standards, the cautious approach is not to use it in hreflang.

Cautious approach:

• hreflang “ca” for the Valencian version and “es” for the Spanish one. That way you do not depend on how Google interprets a variant.
• x-default pointing to the Spanish version, for anyone who arrives with another language set in their browser.
• In the HTML lang attribute, “ca-valencia”. The W3C asks you to add subtags only if they distinguish something: the variant does, the region does not. “ca-ES-valencia” is also valid.

Cautious approach: Catalan websites compete with you in the same searches, with or without hreflang. hreflang only chooses which of your versions each user sees. What sets you apart is the local side: town, address and Business Profile.

This is how the Spanish page looks. The Valencian one has the same 3 tags and the lang attribute with the value ca-valencia:

<!-- https://www.ejemplo.es/es/herencias -->
<html lang="es">
	<head>
		<link
			rel="alternate"
			hreflang="es"
			href="https://www.ejemplo.es/es/herencias"
		/>
		<link
			rel="alternate"
			hreflang="ca"
			href="https://www.ejemplo.es/va/herencies"
		/>
		<link
			rel="alternate"
			hreflang="x-default"
			href="https://www.ejemplo.es/es/herencias"
		/>
	</head>
</html>

The folder can be called /va/ or /ca/: Google does not use the URL to work out the language. Choose the one your clients understand and translate the rest of the address too.

Each page in one language only

Google detects the language from the visible content, not from the lang attribute or the URL. That is why it asks for a single language in the text and the menu of each page, and for side-by-side translations to be avoided.

So no “Benvinguts / Bienvenidos” (“Welcome” in both languages) on the same home page, and no page in Valencian with the menu, the buttons and the footer in Spanish.

The lang attribute does not help rankings, but it does help the browser, screen readers and translation tools. The W3C asks you to always declare it on the html tag, and WCAG requires it at level A (criterion 3.1.1), as we explain in web accessibility law in Spain. If you quote a review in Valencian on the Spanish page, mark that fragment with its own lang (WCAG 2.2, criterion 3.1.2).

A selector without flags or automatic redirects

• “Castellano” and “Valencià”, each in its own language. The W3C advises against using flags for languages, because some countries have several languages. Neither the Senyera, the Valencian flag, nor the Spanish flag.
• On every page, and to the equivalent page. The W3C recommends linking to the other versions on each page. Someone who is reading “Herencias” (inheritance) and switches language should land on “Herències”, not on the home page.
• No choosing the language by browser. Google asks you not to redirect users based on the language you think they speak. Besides, its crawler does not state a language when it crawls, so it might not see your Valencian version.
• Remembering the choice, yes. If the user chooses the language, the cookie that remembers it does not need consent (the Spanish Data Protection Agency’s (AEPD) cookie guide, section 2.1.2.b). The exception applies when the user chooses, not when the website decides for them. The rest of the cookies are covered in legal texts and cookies.

How much each language costs depends on the tool: in Framer it is a monthly fee, in WordPress a plugin and in code, development hours. We compare them in Framer, WordPress or code.

The Valencian version pays off most for shops and clinics in Valencian-speaking districts

This is our approach, built on the law and the usage data above. The areas are those of the 2021 survey.

The first pages are always the decision pages: the one that convinces and the one that collects the enquiry. A home page in Valencian that leads to a form in Spanish leaves the client halfway. And in phases means fewer pages, not half-done pages: complete every page you open.

Let’s say a physiotherapy clinic in Vila-real has 2 physiotherapists. If half of its patients write to it in Valencian, the first phase would be home, first visit, its 3 main treatments and contact. The blog and the rest of the pages can wait until the first phase has been checked and is up to date.

No page in Valencian goes live without these 16 points

Cautious approach: if you cannot meet point 16, do not open the Valencian version. A version with old prices or untranslated pages does more harm than not having one, as we explain with abandoned languages in the industrial company website guide.

What to do on Monday

1. Count which language people used in your last 50 emails, WhatsApp messages and reviews. It is your best data.
2. Do the autocomplete test with your 3 main services and your town, in Valencian and in Spanish.
3. Check how your team replies to people who write in Valencian. Make sure nobody asks them to translate, and prepare 3 or 4 well-written standard replies.
4. If you sell to consumers, have your quote and your terms in Valencian for whoever asks for them.
5. If you decide to do it, choose your first pages in the decision table and agree the glossary before translating.
6. Ask whoever manages your website for hreflang “es” and “ca”, the lang attribute on every page and a selector without flags.
7. Search the BDNS and ask your town council whether there is an open grant. In Moncada, the call sets the deadline at 17 November 2026.
8. Run the free audit of your website to check technical SEO, speed and access for AI crawlers.

If you would rather have help, at NOR studio we design bilingual websites in Framer, WordPress or code, with hreflang and the selector sorted from the start. We do not do professional translation: your team writes or checks it, or a translator of your choice does, and we integrate it into the website. We explain how on our web design page.