The pro-independence extreme right already governs in two Catalan towns: Ripoll and La Masó

The pro-independence extreme right has made history in Catalonia. For the first time, two mayoralties have fallen into the hands of openly xenophobic formations. One is La Masò, a small town in Tarragona, where the Front Nacional de Catalunya (FNC) will govern with 4 councilors compared to 3 from Junts per Catalunya (which previously had the 7 councilors of the consistory).. The other town is Ripoll, capital of the Ripollès region, a city with a high level of Islamic immigration that has given rise to a small group that was born when they decided that the FNC was no longer their benchmark for being soft. The only councilor that the FNC took out in 2019, Sílvia Orriols, revolted in her seat and created a new party, Aliança Catalana, a radical platform that on March 28 turned the score around and caused Junts to lose most i had.

The 503 votes of the FNC in 2019 became Aliança Catalana 1,401 votes that represented 6 councilors. Junts, on the other hand, went from 2,263 votes to 760 and from 8 to 3 councilors. ERC dropped from 936 to 734, but kept its three councilors. The PSC lost a councilor and went from 3 to 2, while the CUP kept its two representatives and the Som-hi Ripoll Independents del Ripollès (IDR-IDC) force burst into plenary session with a mayor.

At the time of the vote, Cuban Socialists and Republicans voted for the ERC candidate, Chantal Pérez (she had 7 votes), while the independent councilor abstained and JxCat voted for his candidate, Manoli Vega (3 votes).. Consequence: Orriols was appointed mayor for being the candidate from the most voted list.

With her grandfather's barretina on the table, the representative of Aliança Catalana promised her position “by legal imperative and I swear by the Catalan Constitutions that governed the country on September 11, 1714, legal, in force and non-derogable, which I will fight to restore and guarantee the rights and freedoms of my people”. In this way, the capital of the Ripollès region and one of the most important towns in the Girona Pyrenees, has been taken over by the extreme right, although Orriols is determined to deny that statement.. “I want to call for calm, because Ripoll will not have any far-right government. We will govern judiciously, we will govern responsibly. We will also do it with courage. We will govern for the Ripolleses and not against the Ripolleses. Right now the county Villa de Ripoll is the cradle and is the hope of Catalonia”, he said at his inauguration.

Shots against Islamism

His good words have to be sifted through some of his statements. In his inauguration, he justified having had so many votes because “the neighbors are fed up with the privileges and the favorable treatment towards an association that has allowed a call to kill infidels. They are fed up with seeing how our streets almost have more women with their hair covered than with their hair waving free.. We are tired of working our ass off to make ends meet watching others live, without doing anything, on our taxes.. We are fed up with the night fights, the drug traffic, the incivility that dirty our walls and destroy our furniture.. It is not a fanciful story that I have built from this chair. It is a reality that you have insisted on denying. They have preferred to defame me, disqualify me, laugh at my proposals and knock them down. Their eagerness to ridicule me and belittle me has made them forget that I am not some fortuitous accident, but the legitimate representative of a part of the people”.

Before the official act, several hundred people gathered in front of the City Hall protesting against “racism and intolerance”. At 11 in the morning, Orriols herself published a photo of the square in which there was no one on her account.. “At this time, the demonstration against Sílvia Orriols was supposed to begin. This is the atmosphere that exists at this hour in front of the Ripoll Town Hall”. It also showed a video with the Mossos d'Esquadra and the Urban Guard deployed in front of the doors of the consistory. “Thanks to the local Ripoll police and Mossos for guaranteeing the right to political representation”, he thanked. At the end of the morning, another photo of the tomb of count Guifré el Pilós (Wifredo el Velloso) hung. “Everything began here and, from here, we will reconquer everything”. The extreme independence movement already has a new leader, with epic connotations. Shortly after, the press was already distributing his photograph with other Aliança militants toasting with cava. “Giving me support is a risk of being stigmatized and, therefore, it has double merit,” she thanked her neighbors after being appointed mayor.

The cordon sanitaire failed

The big parties have talked over the last two weeks about the creation of a united front or cordon sanitaire against the Orriols force and talks began. But the president of Junts, Laura Borràs, expressed her doubts, stating that the list with the most votes should be allowed to govern “to respect the will of the people”, some surprising manifestations of the person who held the presidency of the Parliament being the third force with the most votes or of who did not respect the most voted list in the last regional elections and did not allow the socialist Salvador Illa to be president. Faced with the disavowal of senior officials from his own party, he went off on a tangent advising that it be the local leadership that decided “democratically” what to do.

And the local address of Junts did it. In fact, this strategy of lack of definition resulted in the fact that, when the ERC, PSC and CUP already had an agreement practically signed, they found Junts refusing to be part of it. The pick up came late Friday afternoon, appealing to the fact that Junts had been underestimated. The truth is that Borràs's party wanted the mayoralty for its candidate, Manoli Vega, while playing her cards to make an anti-Orriols operation fail that left her tied hand and foot in front of the rest of the opposition. On Friday, at the last minute, the situation was clarified with the unchecking of JxCat and the way for Orriols to be elected mayor as head of the most voted list was paved, since in the absence of Junts the other councilors were insufficient to raise an absolute majority. It was such a tactical situation that Vega herself, in the act of inauguration of Orriols, already proposed herself “as the second most voted list, to lead a motion of censure starting Monday”. clearer, the water.

Ripoll's future is unknown. Aliança Catalana is a force that announces that it will “declare and defend independence”. In its principles it already says that “Aliança Catalana was born to unilaterally declare independence and defend it until the Spanish State was definitively expelled from Catalonia. Catalonia is a nation. We recognize ourselves as a nation and we have repeatedly endorsed ourselves to demand that our government become an independent state within the international concert.”. In addition to proposing Catalan as the only official language, its program includes promoting “immigration policies that benefit the citizens of Catalonia, not foreigners. In this sense, it will promote a restrictive immigration policy, until the level of unemployment drops and wages increase to European levels”.

A preview of the heavy hand

It also promises to “redirect aid and public services to the citizens of Catalonia, not to foreign citizens (…) 80% of immigrants in Catalonia are from outside the EU and have an average income 40% lower than Catalans. This immigration represents a social burden and makes the public protection network inaccessible to the majority of Catalans who see how their government leaves them helpless when they need it most”. It also promises to deport “violent immigrants and repatriate illegal immigrants.”. Crime and the waste of public resources will be put an end to with the phenomenon of Mena (Unaccompanied Foreign Minors), where the Generalitat has wasted more than 150 million euros and has not been able to prevent 18% from committing crimes. Almost half of the inmates in Catalonia are of foreign origin, when they represent less than 20% of the population”.

On June 7, before an announcement from the City Council announcing a women's dinner in various languages and in whose drawings one of them was seen wearing a veil (out of a total of 7), Aliança Catalana made an announcement of its own: “The Ripoll City Council governed by Aliança Catalana will not normalize the Islamic veil, a symbol of the submission of women, with money from the people of Ripoll. Nor will it help demographic substitution or promote the loss of identity of the Catalan Nation (sic).. Enough of pro-Islamist propaganda!”. It is an announcement to sailors, but also a foretaste of the strong hand that Orriols wants for its people.

In La Masò, a town near Tarragona, the expectation was minimal, among other things because it does not have the economic, social and political weight of Ripoll. It is just a town with a census of 235 inhabitants of which 177 voted. But that was enough so that the seven councilors that Junts per Catalunya previously had are now, for the most part, in the sack of the FNC: this small party obtained 91 votes compared to Junts' 67, which was left with 3 councilors. The Front, however, has a total of six councilors, since it also obtained two representatives in Manresa, where it obtained 1,618 votes. It was also presented in Barcelona (930 votes) and in Girona (158 votes), but it did not get representation in the two capitals..