Cuatrecasas lifts the cordon sanitaire in Orriols in front of 250 people from the business world

BarcelonaThe first major event for Sílvia Orriols, president of Aliança Catalana, with members of Catalonia's economic and business elite, took place this Saturday in the small town of Gualta, as planned. This followed an invitation extended a few days prior by Emili Cuatrecasas, honorary president of the renowned law firm, to personally invite the mayor of Ripoll to meet her for the first time. According to ARA, during this meeting, Orriols reiterated her view that Catalonia is undergoing a process of "replacement"—citing Ripoll as an example, where she asserted that 50% of births are of Maghrebi origin—and rejected the label of racist, stating that the problem is not about race. the extraordinary regularization of half a million migrants Approved Tuesday by the Spanish government. He also said that independence is a right to be restored.

During the meeting, held at the Terraverda Hotel in Gualta, with the group of members of the collectiveSmall Empordà Committee,Many of them members of the Empordà golf club, Orriols said that "people who break the law cannot be rewarded" and that being in a country illegally is breaking the law. "The first thing that must be done is to establish order," Orriols said, according to the same sources present at the meeting. The mayor of Ripoll said that this regularization means family reunifications, and argued that what needs to be done is to stop the flow of migration and then analyze the needs.

She also spoke about the controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has initiated aindiscriminate persecution of immigrants in the United StatesOn this point, she said that the longer a problem is allowed to fester, the more radical the solutions must be. When asked about her position on the role of the state and which far-right or extreme-right group she would align herself with—whether with the libertarians of Argentine President Javier Milei or with the far right in Germany—Orriols did not define herself, simply stating that the state must be at the forefront.

This first major meeting between Orriols and the Catalan business community, where she was introduced as the mayor of Ripoll and as someone who will be important, comes at a time of good electoral prospects for the party founded in Ripoll, according to all the polls.The last CEO gave him up to 20 deputies in future parliamentary elections. The far-right pro-independence party has two members of parliament and several councilors in various municipalities across the country, six of them in Ripoll.

Independence: a right to restore

Regarding Catalan independence, Orriols has argued that the country has the right to restitution based on historical rights, and when asked if this would entail violence, he maintained that just as Catalans have not resorted to violence against Spaniards, Spaniards would not resort to violence against Catalans. Last October, Orriols canceled at the last minute a conference at the New Economy Forum, held at the Palace Hotel in Barcelona, ​​which has been attended by leading political figures. The fact that Aliança does not play a key role in the governance of Catalonia and on crucial issues such as the new financing model, as well as the fact that it does not intend to run in the Spanish elections, means that the business community is in no hurry to meet with Orriols's representatives. Sources within Aliança also acknowledge that they have not yet requested further meetings with the business sector, but are open to attending if invited, as reported a few days ago by Xavi Tedó and Carlota Serra.