Aliança relegates the founder of the party: "Ílvia Orriols doesn't even pick up the phone anymore"

BarcelonaIt's possible that if Silvia Orriols hadn't won the mayoralty of Ripoll, the Catalan Alliance would never have entered Parliament. Today, this remains a mystery, but what is certain is that neither of these two events would have happened without the participation of Margarita Cabello. This retired woman from Ripoll is the founder and number one member of the Catalan Alliance. "I started it all," she tells ARA from the room where she taught extracurricular English classes to the town's children. It was in this small room with a balcony overlooking Ripoll's Plaça Gran and from which an estelada (Spanish flag) flutters that it was agreed to present a candidacy for the far-right party in the 2019 municipal elections.

Shortly after the 17-A attacks, Cabello began looking for people to knit, and she managed the terrorist attack committed by young people from the town. "I'm thinking of creating a platform to make it clear that the people of Ripoll don't agree with the attacks being turned into a tribute to the families of the terrorists and with us being branded as intolerant when we didn't do anything, not a single demonstration of rejection," she denounces, convinced that some relatives knew that some relatives knew they were martyrs. Disappointed, she decided not to attend the event in Ripoll and went to Barcelona to boo the king. A few days earlier, she told the then ERC councilor, Teresa Jordà, that Jordi Munell would lose the mayor's office with that event. Together, she failed to win the mayor's office in the following local elections.

What she also couldn't have foreseen at the time was that she would end up being removed from the political project she had hatched. The reason is that in 2019, few people in the municipality wanted to get involved. In fact, the list headed by Orriols was created under the name of the National Front of Catalonia because they didn't feel capable of collecting the necessary signatures to run in such a short time, and it was supplemented by some members of that party who were not from Ripoll. Cabello was the last candidate on that list. In the last municipal elections, now under the name Aliança, Orriols asked her to run for a leading position on the list, and the party's founder responded that she didn't want to be a councilor and wanted to occupy the same position, which is what ended up happening. "I'm older now, and I've always been at the back of the Aliança party; I'm not interested in being the visible leader." Her decision displeased Orriols, who later asked her again if she had reconsidered and received the same response from Cabello.

"My decline began before the last municipal elections. With the creation of the lists, I lost Silvia's trust," explains Cabello, who is convinced that if she were a councilor, she would not have been relegated. From then on, Cabello, who was elected president of Alianza in Ripoll in November 2022, lost the status she had within the party: "Until that moment, I was in charge of finding people for the list, organizing events and parades, or disseminating Orlyls' speeches in a WhatsApp group. They marginalized me, when the majority of the people in Aliança are there for me."

Proof of this relegation was the election of the Ripollès regional executive committee last March. In September 2024, Cabello asked Orriols for an honorary position, and she replied that he should consult her, but it took them half a year to say yes, when she's supposed to be the one making the important decisions. "I deserved it," says Cabello, declining to go into further details. She does admit that her relationship with Orriols is minimal due to third parties, both Ripoll and management. "He doesn't answer my calls or texts, and when we see each other on the street, we talk about anything but politics." However, she makes it clear that whenever Orriols needs her, she'll be there. "I wish him the best of luck," she emphasizes.

Despite her disappointment, she hasn't broken with the party she founded and continues to maintain that Orriols is the leader this country needs: "I'm still a member, but I've wasted eight years of my life with the party and I don't want to have anything to do with it anymore, because I don't feel valued or loved, even though I told them from the very beginning that I didn't want to hold any office, and that I'm a thousand-euro pensioner." Her lack of involvement is the argument the far-right party gives for having removed Cabello, who, along with Orriols and Oriol Gès—now the organization secretary—was the one who registered the party at a notary's office in Ripoll in 2020. Now, she's hardly seen at any event, with a few exceptions, and there are few accounts. "If I'm bothering someone, I step aside," she says, hurt.