"Sílvia Orriols doesn't want us to integrate, she wants us out of here"

RipollIn recent weeks, Mohamed Bahloul has not only been concerned about ensuring that all the dishes in the Molló restaurant where he works as a cook are prepared as his boss requests. In the afternoons, when he went to the Esperanza café, a meeting point for the Muslim community in Ripoll, he had to inform his compatriots about how the negotiations were going to oust the mayor Silvia Orriols: "Everyone was expectant, they asked me if the parties would agree to get her out." Between games of checkers or Barça or Madrid matches (here the clientele is divided) and savouring a hot tea despite the fact that it does not seem like a winter like the ones before, Bahloul explained to them what he was getting into.

On Tuesday, when Junts announced that it was withdrawing from the motion of censure, the news fell like a bucket of cold water on a good part of the almost 1,200 inhabitants of Moroccan origin who live in this town that has almost 11,000 inhabitants. "I don't know what we will do with that right," criticizes Bahloul in response to the decision of the Junts to back out at the last minute. "People felt bad because we had hoped that change would be possible," he admits resignedly. And the fact is that the leader of the Alliance has turned Muslims into the donkey of all the blows following the attacks of 17-A of 2017, which were perpetrated on young people of Maghrebi origin born in the capital of Ripolles.

Bilal Elkasmi, president of the El Fath Association, which manages one of the two mosques, does not hide his disappointment with the junteros. "It is the second time that they have allowed Aliança to take over the mayor's office," he says, blaming the party led by Carles Puigdemont for also undermining the understanding after the elections. At the doors of the mosque, Elkasmi, also in Catalan, is convinced that there will be a vote of punishment for Junts in the municipal elections. "The Muslim community voted for them because we got along very well with the mayor Jordi Munell and he always helped us, but things have changed now," the top leader of the entity concludes. "They will wake up, because the people of the community who have Spanish nationality vote and know that parties like ERC or CUP did support change."

"In the next elections we will mobilize to vote"

Once the sunset oratory is over, the fifteen or so faithful who have come to the mosque to pray leave the premises, which has been operating normally for a quarter of a century. One of them, Rashid Elmarajie, regrets that the parties have once again "failed", but he is clear that in the next elections those who, like him, came from Morocco a few decades ago to seek a better future will not stay at home: "We will mobilise and go out to vote because there are those who want to leave", as things are.

Elmarajie, who works in a recycling company, admits that the shock was worse when she was sworn in as mayor than now: "At first it was shocking, but now we are used to it and we have accepted that we are her enemies, but also that she cannot do most of the things she promises because we are protected by law." And she does not mince her words when stating, also in perfect Catalan, that Orriols does not care whether they integrate or not: "She does not want us to integrate, she wants us out of here, like the Zionists with Palestine."

In a municipality that takes no more than fifteen minutes to walk from one end to the other and where everyone lives mixed, contact between politicians and citizens is almost daily. Elmarajie often meets the mayor. "She looks at me with a face of hatred and I look at her thinking that she is a poor woman who lives obsessed with us, and that does not help coexistence." He, like the rest, is so neck-deep that without the 17-A attacks Orriols would not govern in Ripoll nor would he be in the Parliament: "What four of them did is being paid for by the thousand of us who live here, they blame us for those events and accuse us of being terrorists, but without that speech he will not win votes."

Bahloul does not hide his anger either so that they are all put in the same bag: "The 17-A makes us ashamed, people go to the mosque simply to pray, in neither of the two mosques are Salafist speeches made." Orriols promised to close them, but has not gone ahead and in the Parliament she only received the support of PP and Vox. "She lives off confusion and fear and points to Islam as a political-religious ideology, making people believe that all Muslims can become radicals," denounces Omar Elabdali, who presides over the Moroccan Youth Association of Ripollès.

The confrontation, on the networks

In Ripoll there is no atmosphere of confrontation or bad weather. Neither do Aliança voters harass Muslims in the street nor are there graffiti on walls against them. In fact, the only graffiti or stickers visible are to show their opposition to the far-right party. Nor in schools or at the institute, according to various sources consulted, has political tension reached the classrooms. At most you hear some comments saying "there are more and more of them" or "in the end they will all be Moroccans", but always indirectly, according to girls of Moroccan origin who work in the hospitality sector.

The battle is being fought on the networks, where Orriols has found the perfect medium to spread his xenophobic discourse. "He publishes photos of our women or mothers wearing the veil without their permission, violating their privacy, and they have not reported him because they never complain about anything," says Bahloul, who criticises this interference. "Let everyone dress as they want," he says in response to Orriols' constant reproaches on the veil, who denounces that women "cover their hair so as not to provoke or offend men." At first he responded to her on the networks, but now he has had enough: "I no longer pay attention to him because he spreads lies all day long and he will not change."

But the arrival of Aliança has had some consequences on daily life. Muslims complain that now all the aid takes longer to arrive. Whereas before the aid for extracurricular activities arrived in June, now it arrives in September, and where before the process of registering did not take more than a couple of days, now it takes as long as possible, that is, three months. "It is about putting up as many obstacles as possible," all those interviewed agree.

Orriols boasted this week of having rejected thirty requests for registrations of immigrants in an irregular situation and of deregistering a hundred more. Francisco Campayo, head of the local police of Ripoll, acknowledges that the new government has placed emphasis on monitoring registration. The data, to which the ARA has had access, speak for themselves. The 50 census checks in 2023 have quadrupled to 208 in 2024. "The previous government did not manage us very well and now it is given a lot of importance," he explains. Inspections for overcrowding of flats have also increased (of the thirty that have been carried out, 21 have been sanctioned) and requests to expel undocumented immigrants. "Last year, one in eight was expelled, and now there is a request on the table," he explains while revealing that they have not recorded the total number of illegal immigrants.

Campayo claims that Orriols' supporters vote for her because of the insecurity that she denounces that people experience on the streets and not because of the national issue, and exemplifies this with the fact that in the municipal elections, in the Sant Pere neighbourhood, where a large part of the Andalusian immigrants live, Aliança won at all the tables, and that in the Catalan ones, Catalan won. But the data also refutes that the rates are in any way alarming: "There is no insecurity, but rather specific events, but if there is a robbery it is magnified because everyone finds out," says the agent, who recalls that in all of 2024 there were only two robberies with violence. In this sense, Orriols was proud on Friday for having reduced the robberies with violence by 70%, but he hid the fact that in 2023 there were only 7. "The only time they robbed me and ripped off a necklace were some South Americans, you can't say that everything is done by Moroccans," Moroccans don't do it. However, Orriols never criticizes this group, which comprises about 700 people, and Campayo makes it clear that they also cause some conflicts.

The shadow of 17-A

Although they cannot carry out inspections in the mosque because it is the responsibility of the National Police and the Mossos, Campayo claims to have contact with the imams to resolve any complaints: "Some neighbours called us because the kids were playing in the street outside the mosques at night during Ramadan and we spoke and the problem was resolved immediately." The police chief also agrees that without 17-A Orriols would not have won the elections: "It did a lot of damage to them having been born here and for no one in the community to warn of what the imam was planning."

Agustí Dalmau, the archivist at the Ripoll Museum, says that as a result of 17-A some people have become "racist" and that Orriols is "the consequence of the attacks." She also adds a demographic component: "It is a mountainous area where 25 years ago outsiders were few and far between, and here the people, who are very conservative, have not become accustomed to the fact that so many immigrants have suddenly arrived." And the underlying problem is that each community is doing its own thing, with few synergies and few exceptions that only serve to make the ghettos chronic. This is what Carme Brugarola is trying to combat from the Teixim Ripoll association, which predicts a worse future due to the withdrawal of the motion for "political interest" by Junts: "Ties have been broken and the atmosphere has become rarefied because the extreme right is what they are looking for, and now, unfortunately, they will continue to do so."