Who's who in the far-right independence movement

BarcelonaIn the last elections, the Catalan Alliance successfully brought the far-right pro-independence movement into the Catalan Parliament for the first time. The migration phenomenon and disenchantment with the pro-independence parties due to the paralysis of the Process have provided the perfect breeding ground for Silvia Orriols's party to enter the Catalan parliament after winning the mayoralty of Ripoll and gaining significant popularity. The Catalan Alliance has become the leading figure in this space, but has failed to unite the pro-independence far-right, which is divided into various minority parties and organizations. But who is who in the xenophobic pro-independence network?

Orriols is the visible leader of the far-right pro-independence movement, and, like Santiago Abascal in Vox, the president of the Catalan Alliance exercises strict control over the party. All important decisions are made through her, as seen with the configuration of electoral lists in Parliament or even in municipal plenary sessions, where she monopolizes almost all interventions. In fact, Xavier Torrens, in his book Saving Catalonia: The gestation of Catalan national populism, has no doubt when it comes to linking the success of the xenophobic party in the future to the continuity of Orriols: "If Silvia Orriols leaves politics, Aliança Catalana will sink". And in another interview in ARA, Xavier Rius Sant stated that the party functioned as a sect where everyone obeys him.

Around him is a small core of leaders who make up the governing committee. The most relevant figure in this core is Oriol Gès, secretary of organization and finance, who is in charge of the party's territorial expansion and balancing the accounts. Also of significant importance is Jordi Aragonès, secretary of studies and programs, who defines the party's ideological line; the former head of the list for Barcelona, ​​​​Lluís Areny, secretary of communications; and the candidate for Tarragona, Aurora Fornos, secretary of institutional policy, who complete this core, along with Franc Massaneda, secretary of political action and youth. It is rounded off by Jordi Coma, number 2 for Girona, who, along with Gès, also advises Aliança in the Parliament.

Enmity with the FNC

Gès and Aragonès, who are at odds with each other, were instrumental in Orriols breaking away from the National Front of Catalonia (FNC) on March 31, 2020, just one year after joining the council. "Due to the fear and insecurities of the party's current leadership when it comes to addressing the serious national crisis and the immigration problem, I have decided not to become a member and leave the municipal group," Orriols explained before attacking the FNC's general secretary, Jordi Casacuberta: "What they haven't been able to stop at the polls." Orriols wanted to toughen his rhetoric against immigration and the reception of refugees, which bothered the Front, but underlying the conflict was also a buried struggle for control of the party.

Gès, Aragonès, Maiol Sanaüja, and Eduard Llaguno, who had joined the Front a few months earlier, clashed with Casacuberta, who, like Ventura Niubò, and the former leader of the neo-Nazi Spanish Circle of Friends of Europe (Cedade), Xavier Andreu. The three usurped the Front's initials in 1999 after the anti-Franco organization, founded in 1940 in Paris, dissolved in 1990 due to the departure of its militants to the ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia). The clash led this group of young people to reach an agreement with Orriols to create Alianza, and many of the Front's militants also changed parties. In fact, Aliança attempted to recruit the two visible heads of the Front at the municipal level, Albert Camps and Sergi Perramon. to eliminate competition, and this only served to deepen the rift between the two parties and their two leaders. With the creation of Aliança, Orriols and Gès also wanted to distance themselves from the leaders who had created, in 2000, the neo-Nazi Catalan National Unity (UNC), which openly and for the first time advocated a Catalan Catalonia with the number 33 as its symbol (the third letter of the alphabet).

The president of the Catalan National Renaixença (RNC), David Lloret, another of the historic leaders of the far-right pro-independence movement, comes from the FNC and UNC. This party, born out of the Catalan Identity Movement (MIC), contributed to the FNC's lists in the 2021 elections, but failed to provide any members in the most recent. "We wanted a united patriotic candidacy, but Alianza refused, and the Front decided to go it alone," explains Lloret, who admits that some of his members did vote for AC and that they do not plan to compete in elections, despite calling the party "liberal and unpatriotic." He defends Catalunya, a split from the MIC, but has been seen at many Alianza events and supports it. This is not the case with Som Catalans, the pro-independence split from Plataforma per Catalunya, which called for abstention and distanced itself from Aliança due to its defense of LGBTI rights, the integration of non-European immigrants, and neoliberalism.

Identity nationalism

There are also new nationalist organizations accused of flirting with the Catalan Alliance. One of these is Nosotros Soles! (We Are the Suns!), a youth organization born after the Urquinaona riots. It borrows the name of the political-armed organization of Daniel Cardona, the great figure of the insurrectionary independence movement of the 1920s and 1930s, who is also a figure in Orriols. "They place us in this space because we are nationalists, but those who sympathize are a minority," asserts David Silvestre, its president. Be that as it may, Silvestre refuses to classify AC as far-right and defines it as "right-wing liberal."

The magazine's director also comes from Nosotros Solos! Spirit -with authors who are "right-wing nationalists," according to themselves, Frederic J. Porta, who has now taken over the direction of the Magazine of Catalonia, founded in 1924 by Antoni Rovira i Virgili. An appointment that led to the resignation of the editorial board en masse. Lawyer and professor Neus Torbisco, who was a member of the journal's scientific committee, announced her resignation because there was only one woman among the members of the new board of trustees. In conversation with ARA, she also points to the ideological drift the publication will take as a result of her departure: "I wouldn't want to be associated with people not only close to AC but also those who defend an ethnicist and exclusionary conception of the nation."

Porta has already made it clear that they have no intention of distancing themselves from the far right: "We have no ties to any party, but we have no hostility toward Aliança, nor will we impose any cordon sanitaire on it." In this regard, she reveals that they will dedicate an issue of the magazine to discussing demographics, one of the topics that Orriols's party always brings up to denounce demographic substitution. "The far right is a label used to avoid talking about certain issues," criticizes Porta, who has compiled Cardona's complete works in a book.

Beyond these publications, AC has the coverage of some media outlets. In the absence of the now-defunct 8TV, which played a key role in promoting Orriols, XCatalunya, E-Notícies, owned by, among others, the son of former ERC councilor Josep Bargalló, Guillem Bargalló, and Girona Noticias are the three major digital media outlets sympathetic to Alianza, and the last two were Ripoll on election night.

Former 8TV journalist Sergi Maraña was another of the lucky ones allowed into the venue. Maraña, who has participated in Aliança Catalana events, is one of Orriols's greatest supporters on social media and has defended the need to toughen immigration policy.

The writer Ramon Sargatal, who was supposed to host the failed summit between AC and the Front in his home to run together on 12-M, is another of the columnists that Orriols defends from the pages ofThe Punt Avui for wanting "a non-colonized Catalonia." Writer Enric Vila; political scientist Ramon Cotarelo; former president of Súmate, Chema Clavero; president of Catalunya Acció, Santiago Espot; and former ERC councilor at Barcelona City Council, Agustí Soler, are other figures who have defended Orriols against the other parties' veto.