The opposition in Ripoll is moving towards forming a three-party government to unseat Silvia Orriols

BarcelonaNegotiations to oust Silvia Orriols from the Ripoll mayoralty are moving forward. According to SER Catalunya and confirmed by ARA, the talks are progressing at a good pace to form a three-way agreement between Junts, ERC and the PSC, after the socialists have agreed to enter the municipal government. Socialist sources stress that it is still to be finalised and that they will make it public when they have met with everyone, waiting for the "loose ends" to be closed, which all sources confirm are still open. Municipal sources familiar with the talks add that the agreement is increasingly "closer" and that "the question on the table is when it will be made public". Some of the areas of government that each party will assume have yet to be defined, and whether the mayor's office will be only for Junts - the first force with three councillors - or if it will be shared with ERC - the second force with three representatives. Although the agreement is just around the corner, there is still nervousness among the negotiators, because in the 2023 talks everything went up in smoke at the last minute and Orriols became mayor. The meetings will continue this Tuesday.

In any case, the step taken by the socialists means agreeing to enter the council's government, something they had not verbalised until now. The involvement of the PSC contributes to advancing the talks that must culminate before Monday of next week, the last day on which the motion of censure can be registered after Orriols submitted to a vote of confidence to push through her municipal budgets. The opposition parties hope not to exhaust that deadline. The CUP would support the new government externally.

This Monday, Orriols presented herself in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio as the victim of a "coup d'état perpetrated by the other political parties" in the face of the possibility that she would cease to be mayor due to an opposition pact. In this sense, she stressed her strategy of taking advantage of "the loudspeaker" in the Parliament and warned that she had already foreseen that Junts, ERC, the PSC and the CUP would ally to oust her with an "unnatural pact".