Alliance already has a candidate in Girona, the first in the Catalan capitals

BarcelonaAliança Catalana has been announcing some of its mayoral candidates in recent weeks. Among the names announced are list leaders for county capitals, as well as other municipalities. Last Monday, Mireia Alomà was presented as a candidate for Mataró. What it has not yet done is reveal who the candidates will be for the four provincial capitals. It was scheduled to do so on Sant Jordi's Day, but the party admitted that the candidate planned for Barcelona backed out at the last minute and thisled to the postponement of the announcement of the list leaders for Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. In the capital of Gironès, as ARA has learned, the person who will head the candidacy will be Marc Villafañe Valero.

He is a businessman linked to the private medical sector in the province of Girona who acts as sole administrator for thirteen limited companies and as a joint administrator for one. Villafañe has spent years building a group of private clinics and healthcare real estate companies that operate independently with the aim of avoiding legal risks between companies and optimizing businesses for tax purposes. Some of the companies in this small business group that he manages are Clínica Lloret, Diagnosi per Imatge Sant Feliu, Baix Empordà Mèdic, Palamós Alfamèdic, which offer assistance and various services, or Immobles Centres Mèdics and Magus Immobles, which are dedicated to the rental of medical premises. This conglomerate, which invoiced 5.7 million euros in 2024, follows the typical structure of an integrated private healthcare group.

A graduate in Business Administration and Management from the University of Girona (UdG), Villafañe also holds a postgraduate degree in business administration from EAE Business School Barcelona (EAE) and another in mechatronic engineering from the University of Vic (UVic). Beyond his business activities, the entrepreneur has now decided to make the leap into politics, where he had not been part of any electoral candidacy or a member of any party before. Recently, in February, a second Instagram account was created where he presents himself as "Girona-born, using Catalan common sense" and as "one more in Aliança Catalana," a phrase often used by militants of the far-right party. However, Aliança's future candidate for Girona has not yet posted anything.

First option

His name was one of those on the table to lead the list for Girona, even though the first option was Gisela Sidera, president of the executive committee of Gironès. This social educator was number 3 for Aliança per Girona in the 2024 Catalan elections on a list led by the party's leader, Sílvia Orriols, who obtained a seat as a deputy. The leadership proposed her as the mayoral candidate now, but Sidera said she would be part of the candidacy, as she did in the parliamentary elections, but that under no circumstances did she want to lead it to avoid such public exposure, according to party sources. Be that as it may, she has so far been the visible face of Aliança in Girona as the party's highest-ranking official in the region.