Sílvia Orriols' rivals in Ripoll are folding their sails

BarcelonaLast week, Chantal Pérez, the ERC spokesperson in Ripoll, announced that she was stepping aside and would not be running again as the lead candidate in the upcoming elections. She will also not be in any of the top positions on the ballot and will end her time on the city council, which began in 2019 as the number two candidate. Pérez, who will remain a councilor until the end of her term, appealed for the need to regenerate party leadership in the capital of the Ripollès region. In her farewell letter on social media, the Republican leader asked that the future candidate "not be linked to everything that has happened in recent years, in order to restart synergies." The wounds opened by the failure to prevent the leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, obtain the mayoral staffAnd even after she retained her position, the repercussions are still lingering. So much so that Junts and the CUP, the other two pro-independence parties in the council, will also change their mayoral candidates. These two parties, however, already saw their candidates, Manoli Vega of Junts and Dani Vilaseca of the CUP, who were also newcomers, resign halfway through their term.

The fact that Ripoll's politics has gained national prominence, with its councilors receiving excessive media attention, and the disagreements within the opposition itself have led Pérez to make a decision she had been considering for a couple of months. After the elections, she was supposed to be the mayor, but at the last minute, Junts withdrew from the agreement that the Republicans had already signed with the PSC and the CUP, and proposed their lead candidate, Manoli Vega, as their mayoral candidate.

The lack of agreement between these four parties allowed Orriols to win the mayoralty with a simple majority, which facilitated his entry into the Catalan Parliament a year later, thanks to the growing prominence he acquired. Few doubt that without the mayoralty, Orriols would have had a much harder time gaining seats in the Catalan Parliament. All of this has caused a seismic shift in local politics in Ripoll, with several councilors resigning and the leading candidates withdrawing from the race.

Five councilors have already resigned.

Pérez is the latest victim of a turbulent term that has already claimed the lives of five more councilors: the three elected officials from Junts, the CUP's lead candidate, and Esquerra's number two, Roger Bosch, the latter for personal reasons. The fragility of the opposition contrasts sharply with the strength of the Aliança Catalana governing team, where none of its six councilors have resigned.

The first to leave was Junts member Josep Isern, who resigned in January and was replaced by Ferran Raigon, who, at just 24 years old, will likely be Junts' candidate in the next elections. He was the one who announced a year ago that Junts withdrew from the motion of censure against OrriolsThis came after the mayor submitted to a vote of confidence due to her inability to pass the budget. That controversial decision, made at the behest of the Junts national leadership, was surprisingly not announced by either the group's leader, Montsina Llimós, or the spokesperson and mayoral candidate in the negotiations, Maria Soldevila, but rather by Raigon himself, with the intention of promoting him in the lead-up to the next municipal elections.

Before the second attempt to oust Orriols from the town council, the Republican Roger Bosch had already resigned in July 2024, and Manoli Vega in September of the same year. A year later, the only remaining elected councilor from Junts, Maria Soldevila, who served as spokesperson, also left. Soldevila would have become mayor had the no-confidence motion being prepared by the entire opposition not been blocked by the party's national executive committee. "Ripoll is a polarized town; politics is the talk of the town all day long, and this situation is exhausting, regardless of whether or not no-confidence motions succeed," Junts sources point out. Orriols's targeting of opposition councilors is also behind their departure: "The mayor crucifies you on social media, leaving you exposed, and in the end, it becomes very difficult to withstand this pressure," the same sources admit.

Dani Vilaseca, the former CUP candidate, stepped aside a year ago, right after the failure of negotiations for the no-confidence motion. "I felt responsible for not being able to reach an agreement to form an alternative government at the beginning of the term and then with the motion, and when everything fell apart, I thought it was necessary to be self-critical because it was a debacle." The fact that Ripoll has been a testing ground for the far right also weighed on his decision: "Everything adds up, including the wear and tear of being on the front lines. In Ripoll, politics has become overblown, and we've become a media focus."

The other parties have yet to define their candidates.

The PSC and Som-hi Ripoll, the independent party that emerged from a split within Junts, have yet to agree on whether they will retain their mayoral candidate. Joaquim Colomer, a councilor for the latter party, has made it clear that they will run again after winning a seat, but he hasn't confirmed whether he will lead the ticket once more. The Socialist Party's lead candidate, Enric Pérez, has also left the choice of candidate to the local party branch, although he emphasizes that he feels "strong and energetic" to continue. A councilor since 2003, with a break from 2015 to 2019, and the longest-serving member of the council, he has no doubt that this has been the toughest term "by far." "Politics in Ripoll had been more about governance, but Aliança Catalana has created tension in the council meetings with populism, crossing all the lines and biting the hand that has been extended to them," he denounces. The disagreements among the opposition during the two negotiation processes aimed at preventing the party from governing have also contributed to the decline in support for the councilors. "The failed negotiations and motions of no confidence have generated frustration because they haven't reached a successful conclusion." Now it remains to be seen whether, with new leaders at the helm, the parties will be able to reach an agreement if Aliança Catalana does not obtain an absolute majority.