Aliança Catalana already has a candidate for the capital: "We are the party of Catalan Barcelona"

BarcelonaAliança Catalana already has a candidate in Barcelona. He is "a man and he is known", as the party leader, Sílvia Orriols, said in February, but he is not the media personality she was presumably referring to, the publicist Lluís Carrasco. The mayoral candidate in the Catalan capital is Jordi Aragonès (Pineda de Mar, 1993), who presented his candidacy this afternoon at El Born Cultural Centre, with about 200 militants from all over the country. The Islamophobic formation had to resort to plan B after offers to Carrasco himself, Sandro Rosell, Jaume Giró and, as a last resort, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas failed.

Sílvia Orriols referred to this fact before introducing the list leader. The president of Aliança downplayed the various rejections she had received from public figures to head the list in Barcelona. "We don't need anyone famous, but someone brave to revive Catalonia, from its cradle (referring to Ripoll) to the capital – she stated–. In four days, Aragonès will be much more famous than the people we spoke to." Thus, she praised the candidate finally chosen: "He is the person this city needs, one of the founders, a convinced nationalist and skillful or reckless enough to rewrite history and change the destiny of our country".

Aragonès began his speech by claiming Aliança's Catalan identity. "We are the party of Catalan Barcelona, we are the Catalan party of Barcelona," pointed out the mayoral candidate, alongside the government committee and the district coordinators of the city. Flanked by the senyera and the flag of Barcelona and with a background screen with the emblem of the Catalan capital with the slogan "Salvem Barcelona" (Let's Save Barcelona), Aragonès criticized the situation in Barcelona. "This city is no longer what it was because it has lost its Catalan identity by submitting to Spain, France and the caliphate", he snapped.

Against the arrival of immigrants

The candidate for mayor of Aliança, a historian and secondary school teacher, and cousin of former president Pere Aragonès, has a clearly liberal and anti-immigration profile, as he already made clear last week by attacking Pope Leo XIV for claiming Catalonia as a country of welcome. These are positions that this Friday he has once again put on the table without subterfuge.

In this way, he has attributed the housing problem in Barcelona to the arrival of immigrants, without pointing out at any time the millions of tourists who disembark in our country each year. "We cannot accommodate 50,000 people arriving in Barcelona each year," he stressed. He has also rejected the closure of tourist apartments agreed by the council: "If the 10,000 tourist apartments are closed, they will accommodate a maximum of 25,000 people, half the number of people arriving in a year." Aragonès, championing the national priority that Vox defends and imposes wherever it governs, has been clear. "We are not here to solve the housing problems for the immigrants who come, but for the Catalans who work and pay their taxes," he exclaimed to the applause of those present.

He has also blamed immigration for the insecurity in the Catalan capital. "Gun violence has returned to the streets, there is one death a week, we cannot go back to those years," he lamented. In this regard, he has supported all police forces. "We will be your allies," he assured, but revealed that all police officers will have to have a certificate of Catalan identity if Aliança governs the capital.

Heavyweight of the party

Alliance, therefore, opts for a heavyweight of the party, its number 3, in its assault on Barcelona, where all the polls published so far give it representation. With the organization secretary, Oriol Gès, he is the best-known face of the party, apart from, obviously, Orriols. Aragonès is one of the founders of the party and has been the secretary of studies and programs since the beginning, after being a member of UDC. Furthermore, he is the ideologue of Aliança and the one who draws up the discourse and strategy to follow.

He himself has put Rhodesia as an example to achieve independence. What is now Zimbabwe was an unrecognized state, governed by a white minority, which emerged when it unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965 to avoid a black majority government with the end of colonization. With its candidacy, Alliance wants to make a mark among the wealthy classes of the capital, especially among Junts voters, with whom it has more border votes and whose breakthrough is costing them more, according to all polls.