The Catalan Alliance's Francoist bid to oust the only National Front mayor

BarcelonaThe dispute between the National Front of Catalonia (FNC) and its split, Aliança Catalana, remains alive. Silvia Orriols' party, as already revealed by ARA, attempted to recruit the two visible leaders of the FNC for the Catalan elections, but both the spokesperson in Manresa, Sergi Perramon, and the mayor of La Masó, Albert Camps, declined to be the leaders of the list for Barcelona and Tarragona, respectively. However, with their sights set on the municipal elections, the Catalan Alliance is once again trying to deactivate the FNC in the municipality of La Masó. In this small Tarragona town of 300 inhabitants, Camps won the elections by an absolute majority after convincing the members of the candidacy to run under his name, althoughNone of them knew what the National Front of Catalonia was..

After unsuccessfully attempting to recruit Camps as its mayoral candidate, the Catalan Alliance has offered its rival in the last local elections, Josep Solé, the candidate for the Alt Camp municipality, according to ARA. The veteran former mayor, who is 82 years old, confirms this. "They offered it to me, but I haven't said yes yet because I first want to see if Camps will run again," he says, adding that "he will ultimately still be the one running for the Catalan Alliance." The fact is that Solé has been seen at various events, conferences, and stops of the Catalan Alliance in the province of Tarragona, such as at the end of July in Reus, while Camps, who has declined to attend any meetings or events of the parliamentary party, maintains that he doesn't see himself representing the Orriols-based party.

Solé downplays her attendance at these events: "Whether I'm going to a presentation or a parade doesn't mean anything. I know people and I've been there, but I could also be in a Junts photo; one flower doesn't make a summer." In any case, she closes ranks with Orriols: "She says things very clearly, and that's why the parties can't stand her, because she takes their votes; she's a good leader who needs to fine-tune some things, but she's very competent."

Camps, who shared government with Solé in the previous term, sees it as "an act of revenge" after snatching the mayor's office from her and also as a bid by the Catalan Alliance to make the maximum number of lists to obtain representatives on the regional councils. Highly critical of the former mayor's management, the current mayor doesn't mince his words when it comes to criticizing his thinking and recalls that he was a councilor in the last eight years of Franco's regime: "He's more of a Francoist than an independence supporter; he was already a councilor during Franco's regime, and he always maintains that there weren't so many problems under Franco and that he did great things." Camps jokes about the fact that he could now stand for the Catalan Alliance: "He told me I was a Nazi, an extremist, and scolded the townspeople for voting for the Catalan Vox, and now he's running for Aliança, as if it were so different from the Frente."

Solé refutes that these reproaches were made in response to the attacks he received: "He told me I was a dictator and I replied that I was a Nazi." In this sense, he accuses the FNC of having ideals close to Nazism: "The Front does not accept Castilians, as Hitler did when defending the Aryan race, while Orriols wants controlled immigration." Be that as it may, he does not distance himself from the Franco regime: "There are things about Franco that could be exploited, and furthermore, he did not join the Nazis, and that should be appreciated," he asserts, despite the logistical and military aid that the regime did provide to the Nazis, for example through the Blue Division. He also believes that the isolation suffered by the Franco regime was due to Spain's lack of resources. "If Franco had had oil, he would have been invited all over Europe; money kills and blesses everything," he concludes.