The other Sílvia Orriols who was already mayor

BarcelonaSílvia Orriols is considering running in the elections again. But she will not do so for Aliança Catalana. No, we are not talking about the leader of the Islamophobic party, who has already made it clear that she wants to revalidate the mayorship of Ripoll with the formation she created after breaking with the Front. We are talking about another Sílvia Orriols, the one who was mayoress of Llívia from 2011 to 2015 and who retired from politics in 2021."There is one year left until the elections and I do not rule out taking the step again at some point, because I did not like how I left," advances the Cerdaña politician in conversation with ARA, who reiterates that "it is not a definitively closed chapter." As for offers, there is no shortage. "Here we all talk to each other," she points out without specifying if she has any firm proposals. And if she received an offer from Aliança Catalana, would she accept it? "I would not accept it, I am more open and I do not like their discourse against immigration; here in the town we have always had immigration, and as a site manager, I work with people from all countries throughout the region."

The arrival of the top leader of Aliança Catalana has disrupted her life, especially when she became the mayor of the capital of Ripoll: "We are quite opposite, but since we are from neighboring regions, at first, when she started appearing in the news, friends from Barcelona used to call me to ask if I was the new mayor of Ripoll, as I had been in politics." Her day-to-day life has also changed and now she has to give many explanations simply because of her name. "When I call someone for work and they don't know me, I have to tell them that I am not the one from Ripoll," she admits after assuring that she has never spoken to her.She had never felt so watched, especially when she leaves her environment and goes, for example, to the doctor in Barcelona and they call her by her name: "People turn around to see if it's me, it's not a very common surname either." That Orriols is a totem in Ripoll, she was able to verify it firsthand. "My son had to take some exams at the Ripoll institute to get his ski instructor's title, and I called the center because I had to speak with him and they called me back in just five minutes when I told them it was Sílvia Orriols, I guess surprised or scared." She doesn't understand it, because her son, who is adopted, is black.The fact is that her homonym has left her without a digital footprint. All the information that was previously on the internet about her now belongs to the deputy and mayoress of Aliança Catalana. "A few days ago I typed Sílvia Orriols into the search engine and now nothing comes up about me, no reviews, when before there were some from my time in the City Council, but I don't care," she says resignedly. And this is despite the fact that her political career was not fleeting either. She entered the consistory in 2007 as the leader of an independent list linked to the PSC and obtained three representatives compared to the six from Esquerra, who achieved an absolute majority.

Change of party

Four years later, the candidacy was linked to CiU and Orriols swept with eight out of nine councilors in elections without Esquerra due to the appearance of Reagrupament from the former mayor of Puigcerdà, Joan Carretero, who broke the party in Cerdanya. "The Pyrenean villages are convergent and CiU was more rooted in the region and also governed in the Generalitat and the Diputació, and this helps because it is easier to talk to them when you need help," explains Orriols to justify the party change.Despite winning the elections again in 2015 with four councilors, Endavant Cerdanya (3) and ERC (2) joined forces to oust her from power, and in the following elections she lost by only eleven votes against these two parties, who ran together. In 2021, after six years as head of the opposition, Orriols resigned her councilor's seat after fourteen years in the City Council. The then-mayor, Elies Nova, presented her with a bouquet and a silver pin with the municipal coat of arms in gratitude for her dedication for the benefit of the town. "It was a nice farewell, but Nova kicked me out of the mayor's office when I had won the elections and should have been mayor from 2015 to 2019," she emphasizes, still hurt. Under her mandate, the famous pharmacy of medieval origin, one of the oldest in Europe, was reopened, and the castle was opened to the public. But what she is most proud of is having wiped out a debt that made Llívia one of the most indebted towns in Catalonia. In just four years, from 2011 to 2015, Orriols reduced it by 65% (almost one million euros) by optimizing resources.Artificial intelligence does not collect its legacy due to the omnipresence of the leader of Aliança Catalana on the internet: "There is no reliable public information indicating that Sílvia Orriols hascleared or reduced any debt of the Llívia City Council. What is documented is that Orriols serves as the mayor of Ripoll and a deputy in the Parliament, but she has not held any institutional responsibility in Llívia. Llívia is a different municipality, with its own city council and local government".