The July CEO Barometer data is revealing: 10% of Vox supporters lean toward Orriols as their preferred choice for president of the Generalitat, above the 4% of the general population, and the significant figure that 51% of their followers approve of the Catalan Alliance leader. However, for now, the reverse is not entirely true: 6% of Catalan Alliance supporters would like Abascal as president, and 17% of Catalan Alliance supporters approve of Garriga. However, the second choice for Catalan Alliance supporters is Junts (32%), while for Vox supporters it is the PP (35%). 15% of Catalan Alliance voters have Vox as their second choice, while 7% of Vox voters have the Catalan Alliance in mind. And in a strict transfer, 5% of Vox voters on 12-M would switch to the Catalan Alliance in the Catalan elections—and 7% of the PP would also go to Orriols, added to 8% of Junts and 4% of ERC—while there would be no change from Abascal's party in the Catalan Alliance, according to this report. Voters of both parties cite immigration as the main issue.
Silvia Orriols comes to the rescue of Vox
The leader of the Catalan Alliance has defended Abascal's positions, with whom she shares a significant ideological core on migration and Islamophobia.
BarcelonaAgainst the positions of the Church and the head of the Catalan bishops on immigration; against Islam in general, in Catalonia and in Jumella, and against Open Arms. In recent weeks, the leader of the far-right pro-independence party Aliança Catalana (AC), Sílvia Orriols, has increased public support for positions defended by Vox and its leader, Santiago Abascal. By defending point by point the content of some controversial statement or attacking someone who has criticized Vox for its positions on immigration, Orriols has systematically come to Vox's rescue when no one had alluded to her. What is her response?
The coincidences are not new; even in the Catalan pre-campaign they used them. an identical slogan, Let's save Catalonia, with accusations of plagiarism by the Catalan Alliance, and They have agreed on several motions in Parliament, with fluid relationships between groups and coincidences from the first dayBut lately, while surveys like the CEO Barometer identify a segment of supporters on the border, Orriols has intensified his interventions even in Spanish politics, supporting Vox. This was especially significant this summer, when Orriols intervened in the Jumella affair to harshly attack the head of the Catalan bishops, the Archbishop of Tarragona, Joan Planellas, who, in fact, has his position. more Catalanist of the episcopate. When Planellas He scolded Vox for the ban on Islamic events in Jumella, warning that "a xenophobe cannot be a true Christian", Orriols defended Abascal: "Has the Archbishop of Tarragona already spoken out about the massacres of Christians at the hands of Islamists on the African continent?" he said, wondering "if to be a good Christian you will now have to be pro-island.
He even cited "internal cases of pedophilia" in the clergy –as Abascal had also done in response to the pronouncement of the Spanish Episcopal Conference–, and attacked the "collaboration with dictatorial regimes" and the "unacceptable rejection of the homosexual community". The final blow to Vox came when Abascal defended "sink" the Open Arms ship that rescues migrants on the high seas And Orriols defended him, responding to Camps' accusations of "fascism" from the Spanish far right – Sumar, Podemos, CCOO, and UGT have all denounced Abascal's statements to the Prosecutor's Office. "Getting rich from human trafficking and trade is a crime," he said. Several citizens criticized him for granting protection to Abascal "without anyone asking him to," but Orriols argued that he defends "the interests of Catalonia." A year ago, there had already been some counter-attacks: the secretary general of Vox, Ignacio Garriga, closed ranks with Orriols when the Ministry of Equality announced a sanction against the mayor of Ripoll for having asserted that "Islam is incompatible with Western values." Both prioritize the fight against immigration and Islam, and this is where they agree.
"Immigration and the battle against Islam are issues that Orriols sees us leading, and he's following the national agenda we've set," Vox sources consulted by ARA maintain. They don't see him doing this primarily to "scrape votes" for his party, but because "it's an essential issue for his electorate." This similarity in immigration concerns could open up a scenario: they see "a dual vote between elections at different levels" as having occurred between CiU and the PP, something they take seriously and will combat to avoid spillovers in some local elections or in the Parliament, although they could also receive votes at the national level. There are some segments of mutual sympathy: according to data from the CEO Barometer for July, 51% of Vox supporters approve of Orriols, while 17% of those in the Catalan Alliance give Garriga at least a five. The Alliance has not responded to this newspaper. However, during the election campaign, Orriols already spoke about the possibility of taking votes from Vox, although his focus has been on Junts, and it is from this party that more than half of his votes came on 12-M, according to a statistical model used by the ARA.
Expansion path
Ivan Serrano Balaguer, UOC political science professor, maintains that Orriols is acting "through the avenue through which he can expand" on the far right, and that "he may be following a conscious and explicit strategy," in addition to wanting "it to be talked about." He warns that the far right is now divided into two parties divided by national identity, but that "in Platform for Catalonia (PxC), they were able to find a segment of Catalanist and Spanish-speaking voters." The key is that among the voters of both parties "there is a lot of ideological, though not territorial, agreement," but "in the segment of the electorate that has the loosest territorial concept, the strategy may have a path" at various levels of elections. That is, dual or differentiated voting with a voter who changes their ballot depending on the contest.
The director of the Institute of Political and Social Sciences, Oriol Bartomeus, agrees, stating that it's normal for both parties and their voters to meet and that "there could be a differentiated vote" from "people who understand that Vox is for the general elections and Aliança Catalana" for the regional elections. This, in fact, "already exists in a small percentage" that he has detected through demographic polls of Vox voters who opted for Aliança Catalana in the regional elections, although the vast majority come from Junts. Despite the different dimensions, "there was triangulation between PxC in the municipal elections, CiU in the regional elections, and the PP in the general elections" or, more widely, between Convergència and the PP. Rather than currying favor with Abascal—which a substantial portion of voters wouldn't understand—Bartomeus claims that Orriols wants immigration and Islam to "be the focus of the debate" and that the "issues and language" of both radical right-wing parties are similar, like the voters, "in everything except a sense of belonging." "If independence is the issue on the agenda, there's no transfer, but if immigration is, a highway opens up between the parties," depending on the electoral context.