Sílvia Orriols threatens with a new vote of confidence

BarcelonaThe budgets of the Generalitat are not the only ones that attract the interest of parties and the media. A hundred kilometers north of Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona, there are other accounts that also mark Catalan politics. In Ripoll, the municipal government plans to put this year's budgets, which have not yet been approved, to a vote on March 31, in the middle of Holy Week, as ARA has learned. The last and only ones approved by Sílvia Orriols since she became mayor, those of 2025, caused a real earthquake both locally and nationally. If this year's are not approved, the mayor threatens to face a vote of confidence again.

A year ago, faced with the impossibility of approving the accounts, the leader of Aliança Catalana submitted to a vote of confidence that she lost due to the rejection of all opposition forces. The far-right party governs with a minority of 6 out of the 17 councilors in the plenary. This gave these parties one month to push for a motion of no confidence to oust her from the mayor's office, but when the agreement seemed to be made, Junts pulled out of the pact, at the instigation of the national leadership, which saw an operation like this mid-term as counterproductive. "We want to defeat the discourse of hate at the polls," said Junts' general secretary, Jordi Turull, pointing to 2027, even though his spokesperson, Maria Soldevila, was to be the mayor and the municipal charter was already being negotiated. Since the vote of no confidence was not successful within the legal deadline, the 2025 budget was automatically approved.

In fact, those of 2025 are the only budgets approved during the term because a year earlier Orriols had also failed to gain the support of any opposition party, and the City Council had to function with the extended accounts of 2023. Now, Orriols wants to approve them, but like President Salvador Illa, she does not have the supports tied down and threatens a new vote of confidence if they do not prosper. She warned of this in the last municipal plenary. Ripoll seems to be stuck in Groundhog Day.

And it is that the open wounds from the failure to prevent Orriols from obtaining the mayor's staff, and later from keeping it, are not yet closed. So much so that Junts, ERC, the CUP will change their mayoral candidate. In fact, none of the three Junts councilors elected in the last elections remain. With a completely renewed group, which already includes the future list leader, Ferran Raigon, the ball is back in Junts' court, who at the time allowed Orriols to govern and then not be replaced.

The ball is in Junts' court

However, Junts has never approved her budgets. Their three votes, added to Aliança's six, make up an absolute majority. ERC also has three, and they would add up, but the national leadership already disavowed the municipal group in the negotiations with Aliança to approve the previous budgets, when the conversations were made public.

What will Junts do now? "For now, send her proposals," say sources from the municipal group to ARA. The decision, they assure, has not yet been made: "We still need to talk about it more, we haven't made any decision yet." Their position, they add, will not follow the directives of the national executive as happened with the motion of no confidence, at least for now. "We have not received any indication from the national executive," say these same sources.

With the other parties, Orriols does not have enough. The two CUP representatives, Orriols' main enemies in the plenary, would never support Aliança's accounts, and with the vote of the PSC councilor and Som-hi, she still doesn't have enough. In any case, the only socialist councilor, Enric Pérez, also sees it as complicated to reach an agreement. "We have made proposals and it will depend on whether they are accepted or not, a priori with what is there now we will not support it," explains the socialist councilor to ARA.

According to the state electoral law (Loreg), mayors can present a maximum of two votes of confidence during their term (and only one each year). Furthermore, they cannot present any during the last year of their term. That is, Orriols knows that the 2026 budgets will probably be the last ones she can approve before next year's elections and, if she does not obtain the necessary votes in the first round, she could once again strain the opposition parties.