The two PSC councilors put their positions at the party's disposal after saving Sílvia Orriols' budgets

BarcelonaEarthquake in the PSC. The socialist municipal group of Ripoll acknowledges "the error that the abstention in the City Council's budget plenary session represents" which allowed Aliança Catalana to approve them, and the two councilors of the group have placed their positions at the party's disposal. They did so after meeting with the PSC federation of the Girona regions, which had previously issued a statement distancing itself from the decision made by the municipal group. "This decision does not have the endorsement or prior knowledge of this federation," stated the federation, which had summoned the two councilors "immediately" to "demand explanations and act accordingly.

The socialist municipal group, in its statement, closes ranks with the leadership and assures that it shares that the vote in the budget plenary session "contradicts the framework positioning of the PSC's general political action" and highlights that the abstention on the budgets was "the product of a decision made exclusively within the group that cannot be transferred to a scenario that exceeds this strictly local character." Previously, the Girona socialist federation had stated that its political project is "incompatible with any approach that promotes exclusion, the rollback of rights, or the normalization of hate speech." The leadership's statement was a complete rejection of the municipal group because it highlighted that its political line is at the "antipodes" of the far-right party's positions and "admits no ambiguities."

The municipal government of Ripoll was pushing for the approval of the budgets without having secured the necessary support, and the mayor Sílvia Orriols had threatened with a new vote of confidence if they were not approved. Aliança, with six of the seventeen councilors in the plenary, only needed a simple majority, meaning more votes in favor than against. And it achieved it, surprisingly, thanks to the abstention of the PSC and the mayor's casting vote in the second round of voting. This is the first time that Aliança has approved budgets with the support of the opposition.

The abstention of the two councilors from the PSC and the favorable vote of the independent councilor from Som-hi Ripoll, Joaquim Colomer, allowed Orriols to approve the accounts. With this vote and the six from Aliança, they totaled seven, the same as those against: Junts (3), ERC (2, due to the absence of a councilor on leave) and the CUP (2). With this tie, the casting vote of the mayor allowed the approval of accounts totaling 14.1 million euros that emphasize security.

The open wounds from the failure a year ago to unseat Orriols from the mayorship are still festering, and this was the reason the socialists used to allow the accounts to be approved. "The PSC abstains to avoid the scenario of a vote of no confidence and to put Ripoll back in the spotlight, although we have plenty of reasons to vote against," admitted the socialists' spokesperson, Enric Pérez. A decision that is at least controversial, as has been seen, because President Salvador Illa has positioned the far-right as the great enemy of democracy and has confronted Orriols several times in Parliament. Junts has benefited from this crisis, having posted a video on social media showing Illa precisely engaging in a dialectical confrontation with the leader of Aliança. "What is the PSC doing to stop Aliança? Negotiating Ripoll's budgets with Sílvia Orriols," denounce the Junts supporters.

Orriols thanks the socialist group for their responsibility

The mayoress thanked "the responsibility" of the PSC for allowing the budgets to be approved. This Friday, Orriols defended the socialist group's actions in response to the socialist leadership's statement: "You should thank the two socialist councilors from Ripoll, who, in an act of institutional and political responsibility, avoided (with their abstention) a new vote of confidence. Ripoll needs stability and good management, not high-flying political tactics".

Open wounds

And indeed, a year ago, given the impossibility of approving the accounts, Orriols submitted to a vote of confidence which she lost. This gave the opposition a month to push for a motion of no confidence to remove her from the mayor's office, but when the agreement seemed to be made, Junts broke away from the pact, at the behest of the national leadership, which saw an operation like this in the middle of the term as counterproductive. Beyond the fact that the 2025 budget was automatically approved when the motion did not prosper, the scars from that new failure have not healed.

This is demonstrated by the fact that both Junts and ERC and the CUP have seen their candidates resign or announce that they will not run again to open a new chapter in Ripoll's politics. The spokesperson for Esquerra, Chantal Pérez, who is also retiring from the political frontline, acknowledged in the plenary session that her party did not want to get involved "in last year's circus", but made it clear that they could not support budgets they did not agree with.