The mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols, has been one of the great protagonists of the election night. Aliança Catalana, the ultranationalist formation that it leads, has gone from nothing to having two seats and becoming the first far-right party with Catalan roots that manages to obtain representation in the Parliament of Catalonia. Orriols’ candidacy, who headed the list for Girona, has won one seat in this province and another in Lleida. “The votes received push us to continue fighting for this Catalan State, free, prosperous, safe and Western,” Orriols expressed with satisfaction at the doors of the party headquarters in Ripoll, where the media was not allowed access.
The openly xenophobic and Islamophobic speech that worked perfectly in Ripoll in the municipal elections of May 28, 2023, linking immigration with crime and the loss of social aid for non-migrants, managed to collect 118,108 votes, 3.8 % of the total. It will be the big news in the Catalan legislative chamber, in which it will share a parliamentary group with the CUP, and together with the 11 deputies that Vox revalidated, it represents a significant result for the extreme right in Catalonia.
The first demographic studies did not give representation to Orriols, but as the campaign progressed, the polls gave him between one and three seats, up to four in the last week. Finally there were two, one for Lleida (Ramon Abad) and another for Girona, with which the mayor makes the leap from local to regional politics.
Orriols’ campaign was a campaign that went unnoticed, as he was unable to participate in any electoral debate given that he was making his debut as a political force. But the president of the party has been repeating her program in recent weeks through social networks and in some events spread throughout the territory, focusing on two strong ideas. The first, a defense of Catalan identity based on “unilaterally declaring and exercising independence” and continuing with the process from which Junts and ERC “desisted”. The second axis has been a radical rejection of immigration, especially Islamic immigration, in line with the discrimination based on origin practiced by the extreme right throughout Europe.
The intention now is, according to Orriols, that these two deputies serve as “speakers” to “add more citizens” to their project in the long run that will allow them to improve the results in upcoming elections. Likewise, she has assured that she will continue as mayor in Ripoll after the citizens “revalidate their trust” in her. Aliança Catalana was the second force in the Ripollès region and the first in Ripoll – cradle of the formation in 2020 when Orriols created it as a councilor of the Front Nacional –, where it even improved the results obtained in the 2023 municipal elections. The party has also imposed on two neighboring towns, Campdevànol and Les Lloses.
The party assures that it will continue fighting “for the creation of its own state”, a proposal with which, together with the simplistic discourse on immigration matters, it has tried to gather votes from the most identity-based sovereigntism and take advantage of the independence movement’s abstentionism, and even the punishment vote. for the disenchantment that the sterility of the process may have spread. Whatever the reason, the party has achieved what Platform per Catalunya and Josep Anglada could not do in 2010: that an extreme right-wing force created in Catalonia has representation in the Catalan Chamber.
Regarding what role Aliança Catalana can play in the Parliament, its seats should not be used to form pacts in the new chamber, since PSC, ERC, Junts, Comuns Sumar and the CUP signed a commitment last week to forge a veto of the extreme right, which includes Orriols and Vox. Even so, Orriols will seek to capitalize on the results he achieved last night. “It is a scenario that we had not foreseen and we have no agreements on the horizon,” he explained, although he has already advanced that his support will be conditioned “on the independence of Catalonia” and on “procedures being carried out that support the state model that we have defended.” ”.
