The mayoral candidate of Aliança Catalana in Vilassar de Mar challenges his dismissal from the ANC

BarcelonaJaume Valls, who was dismissed as coordinator of the ANC in Vilassar de Mar when he was named mayoral candidate for Aliança Catalana, is not throwing in the towel. The activist has asked the ANC's deontological committee to clarify whether the economic and administrative management commission, which is the body that communicated his dismissal, has the authority to remove him as coordinator. "What I question is that an administrative commission acts as both judge and party. The ANC has always been a guarantor, and in this case, someone has decided without taking the regulations into account," Valls denounces in a conversation with ARA. "And my rights have not been respected, nor those of the members in Vilassar who voted for me," he adds, visibly angry at the decision adopted by the entity's leadership.

Since he was dismissed, as reported by ARA, Valls has dedicated himself to exhaustively reviewing the entity's statutes, and concludes that he can only be dismissed by his local branch through the deontological committee and after an internal complaint from the branch members, which was never filed. "No one else is authorized to do so, not the president Pep Vila, not the manager, nor any body like the one that communicated my dismissal to me," criticizes the still-member of the Assembly, who has confronted Vila himself on social media.

"The ANC, as a democratic entity that it is supposed to be, must offer me a process that guarantees rights, and that has deadlines. In the meantime, I should continue to be the local coordinator of Vilassar de Mar," he asserts. In fact, the procedure, he claims, is not concluded until the resolution adopted by the deontological committee is ratified by the secretaries in the Assembly's plenary session. "Now they have established a system that appears nowhere and is not permitted in any regulation or statute," he states.

Beyond the procedure, Valls makes it clear that he could not have been dismissed either. The internal regulations state that a territorial secretary cannot hold any position in another party, but he is only a candidate and does not have any executive function. "The regulations say that when you hold a position there is an incompatibility, but I do not yet have any position," he reveals. And he will not have one either. Aliança named him a candidate without having created the local executive, and members who wish to hold any of the organic positions of a local branch must have been members for at least six months; Valls joined Orriols' party a couple of weeks ago.

Valls does not want to be reinstated

Be that as it may, Valls is not demanding his reinstatement, but rather that the Assembly acknowledges it was mistaken in the procedure used to remove him. "This cannot happen again," he says. In fact, for months now, the former treasurer during Lluís Llach's presidency at the ANC has been finalizing his successor. Coordinator since 2022, Valls explains that on September 8th they held elections to choose a new leadership in Vilassar, but no one came forward to replace him. "Being a coordinator is a position that involves mandatory work, like attending regional meetings, and that scares people," he explains. Another assembly has been called for October 30th to try to elect a new coordinator. Valls hopes that, this time, one of the hundred members the organization has in the town will decide to take the step and he will be able to focus on the municipal elections.