Aliança Catalana has also knocked on Junts' door in Girona. But in this case, to sound out Carles Ribas, a lawyer and councilor in the city from 2011 to 2020, according to Mariona Ferrer i Fornells in ARA. In recent months, he has increased his social media activity with videos denouncing problems of insecurity and dirtiness in Girona. In 2023, he ran using the electoral rights he had from Junts under the Ara Girona banner, with which he did not win any council seats, but garnered 1,579 votes. Support that was key for Junts, led by Gemma Geis, to fall behind Guanyem – the banner under which Lluc Salellas ran – in the last municipal elections. Ribas knows very well that he was an invisible factor in Junts' defeat. And so did Carles Puigdemont. Not surprisingly, just before Christmas, the lawyer and former councilor traveled to Waterloo (Brussels) to meet with the former president of the Generalitat, with the intention of him joining the Junts list. Puigdemont knew it was necessary to neutralize a potentially strong candidate for Aliança Catalana in Girona. In fact, Ribas has also been sounded out by the PSC to join their lists. According to Ribas himself, the far-right party has contacted him more than once. Now the debate he has on the table is whether to join the Junts list, after Geis has already been ratified for re-election, or to lead another one. A weariness, also economic, that he doesn't want to face. Regarding leading Aliança Catalana's candidacy in Girona, which does not yet have a firm name, Ribas assures that he shares some of Sílvia Orriols' party's messages, but "not in their entirety." "I am a person of order, and I think I even make Aliança Catalana uncomfortable," he said at the end of March in a discussion on municipal radio, Girona FM. Be that as it may, he wants to remain involved in politics and, if he were to run, it would be within the Junts list, despite the disagreements he has with Geis.
Catalan Alliance fails in attempt to sign the mayor of Figueres
The far-right party tried to tempt Jordi Masquef last November, but received a no from the juntaire
BarcelonaWith the municipal elections of 2027 on the horizon, Alianza Catalana has been activating its machinery for months to find candidates, including a takeover bid for Junts officials and from the convergent space with the aim of incorporating them into their lists. But amidst meetings and calls left and right, there was an operation that was cooked up last year that aimed to take away the mayor of an entire county capital. As ARA has been able to learn, Alianza Catalana tried to sign the mayor of Figueres, Jordi Masquef, without success. An intermediary, Miquel, a grassroots militant of the far-right party in Empordà, got in touch with the Junts mayor, with whom they already knew each other. The mayor responded to his messages in November, stalled him, and finally rejected the offer, according to knowledgeable sources.
The conversations did not have the yesOrriols fully amends, starting with the concept of CatalanidadAccording to sources consulted by ARA, Masquef responded to the messages he was receiving without ever giving any indication of whether he would accept the proposal from Orriols' party. Arnau Liesa, who is proposing himself as the candidate for Alianza Catalana in the capital of Alt Empordà, on the other hand, assures that Alianza never sounded out Masquef to be the head of the list and that it was the mayor who contacted the far-right party. In February, Liesa and a disgruntled former Masquef employee – who is being sued – spread these accusations on social media, when the operation had already been completely unsuccessful for more than two months. Be that as it may, the mayor of Figueres has "good consideration" within Alianza, which tried to catch a big fish, despite defining itself as "convergent," a legacy that Orriols completely amends, starting with the concept of Catalanidad.
Masquef is one of the juntaire mayors who has clearly put more concepts, such as order and security, on the table. Among other things, he has completely rejected the mass regularization of immigrants and has made repeat offending one of his main battles – despite not linking it to immigration. These are precisely some of the issues that Catalan Alliance has in mind for the municipal elections, where the cultural (and police) battle against Islam will be one of the far-right's slogans. Masquef has warned of the "pull effect" that regularizations like the one proposed by the Spanish government can generate, in a context where many town halls are already "strained" in guaranteeing basic services to citizens. In any case, the mayor of Figueres addresses immigration within the framework of "coexistence", even though he advocates for the expulsion of immigrants who commit crimes.
In this regard, in an interview with this newspaper, Masquef showed little receptiveness to agreeing with Alianza after the elections: "To swallow this toad I would need a lot of bicarbonate."
El Periódico. Last week, also in El Periódico, Masquef showed little receptiveness to agreeing with Alianza after the elections: "To swallow this toad I would need a lot of bicarbonate."