Aliança Catalana admits it cannot find a candidate for Barcelona

BarcelonaTwo months ago, at a conference at Fòrum Europa Tribuna Catalunya, journalists asked Sílvia Orriols if they already had a candidate for Barcelona and the leader of Aliança Catalana said yes. "He is a man and he is known," the head of the far-right party limited herself to saying. She said it while looking at the table where other members of the leadership and the party were sitting and stressed that she could not say anything more until Sant Jordi's day, when it had been agreed to present the candidate for the Catalan capital. The presentation of the candidate, however, has been postponed and will not take place next week. This was announced by Orriols herself this Thursday in Parliament, who admitted that the person to whom they had "entrusted" to be the candidate "has backed out".

Given his refusal, the head of the Islamophobic party said they are in "conversations with different people who could lead the list". "We don't want to rush," Orriols argued to postpone the announcement, after she herself had set this date to make the candidate for the Catalan capital public. "The stigmatization that weighs on us makes potential candidates not see it clearly," she already acknowledged at the February conference. In any case, she said that for Sant Jordi there will be an announcement of candidates in "important cities". Aliança already has confirmed candidates in the other three provincial capitals, Orriols remarked. This Friday, the party leader has asked for time. "Those of us who have lived (from within), with disbelief and hope, the meteoric expansion of the project, know that everything happens for a reason... We just have to be patient. Patient and faithful to the country," she stated on X.

The first option to be the mayor of Barcelona was the former Minister of Economy of Junts, Jaume Giró. The former Junts leader admitted that Aliança Catalana offered him to be a candidate for Barcelona in the next municipal elections and that he rejected it. This is what he revealed in an interview with RTVE in January: "Since I took a step aside on September 4, I have had encounters and meetings with many people who have offered me all sorts of things, from creating a new party to forming a citizen platform. That also happened and I listen to everyone and I said no politely," he explained, referring to the Islamophobic formation's proposal to be the head of the list in the Catalan capital. Giró explained that the proposal was not made directly by the leader of Alianza, but by a person from the leadership, without specifying who it was.

In this journey of possible candidates, another name that had sounded like a potential mayor is that of the publicist Lluís Carrasco, who led Joan Laporta's campaign in the last presidential elections of Barça and who was the ideologue of the banner with a photograph of the now already Barça president that was hung in December 2020 next to the Santiago Bernabéu stadium, with the message "Looking forward to seeing you again". Carrasco, however, has already communicated that he does not want to enter politics, although his agency could take charge of Alianza's campaign in Barcelona for the 2027 municipal elections.

Candidate for Berga

At the press conference in Parliament, Sílvia Orriols announced, as ARA had already reported, that Judit Vinyes will be the mayoral candidate in Berga, after Berga Grup Independent (BeGI), the party she ran with, signed an agreement with Orriols' party to join "the Aliança Catalana project" and thus be "merged" within its ranks. The other councilor from BeGi, disagreeing with the decision, became a non-attached councilor. Vinyes stated that she wants to contribute "experience" and "commitment to the territory" and emphasized that the agreement with Aliança seeks to "join forces in a national project that speaks clearly, defends the territory and the language" and "is not ashamed to say what it thinks".

The designation of the candidate caused unrest in the regional section at the end of last year due to the alleged hand-picked designation of the list leader and led to the departure of some militants. The Islamophobic party responded by saying that the critics were a "very small" group of affiliates from Berga and accused them of violating the party's statutes. Thus, it recalled that there was no local section in the municipality and that "the self-proclamation" of some affiliates in the city had "broken the channels of communication and internal trust".