While traditionalist forces of the left and right across Europe are "shocked" by the landslide victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt, far-right parties are not hiding their joy. Also here at home. Aliança Catalana has shown its happiness for the triumph of the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, in this state of the former East Germany.

Aliança Catalana presented last Wednesday the lawyer Meritxell Feliu as mayoral candidate for Lleida, who was on the Junts lists in the last European elections after having been a member of Unió and Demòcrates. And on Friday, the Islamophobic party announced what is its latest candidate, Lluís Areny, who will lead the list in Sant Quirze del Vallès. Although in the last elections he ran for an independent list, Areny, the party's communications secretary, was a member of Junts from 2018 to 2021.

On June 28, Aliança Catalana fired its candidate in Figueres because he was maintaining a romantic relationship with a former 16-year-old student of his whom he had met while giving a talk on sports management. Arnau Liesa, born in 1995 and 30 years old, was not just another head of the list. He was one of the first mayoral candidates the party announced and he had the unconditional support of the leadership, as evidenced by the fact that he was the organization secretary for the Alt Empordà region. He was a rising star and was aiming to also be in a leading position on the Girona list for Parliament.

Hundreds of people gathered this Wednesday in Barcelona due to the migration crisis in Ceuta, but unlike other cities in the State, in the Catalan capital they concentrated in two opposing sides. Half a thousand anti-fascists stood up to the call supported by Vox and Núcleo Nacional, but also the PP, which defended the Spanish nature of the autonomous city and advocated for the expulsion of all the immigrants who still remain there. Tension did not take long to arrive.

Josep Manel Busqueta (Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, 1972) was one of the CUP deputies who most opposed the investiture of Artur Mas in 2015, and the CUP's refusal to invest him led him to leave Parliament in compliance with the agreement with Junts pel Sí for the investiture. The other resigning deputy was Julià de Jòdar, who leaned towards voting in favor of Mas. The two departures sought to balance the different sectors of the CUP, amidst great internal tension.

In s’Alguer, the cove where the new Estrella Damm advertisement was filmed, one person lives all year round. This is Miquel Carós (Palamós, 1948), who has been living for twelve years in one of the fishermen's houses with coloured doors in this spot of crystal-clear waters on the Costa Brava. Now he is no longer the sole inhabitant. Six years ago, another man settled there with his son. None of the three would be living there if Franco had not died on November 20, 1975. "It was close, the machines were already prepared to demolish the shacks, but since he died, everything stopped," he explains.

Like many other young people, Nabil Doubrik arrived from Morocco by boat. He was only 16 years old. The lack of opportunities led him to undertake a journey in which he risked his life because in the Atlas village where he was born he had no future: "If in general in Morocco it is complicated, in the southeast even more so," he explains, while making it clear that his family did not endorse his plan. "I was not aware of the risk and at first my parents told me no, but over time they ended up accepting that I leave".

Tension remains high between Italy and Spain over the Ceuta migratory crisis. The Italian government has denounced Spain's decision to impose border controls at ports and airports on passengers arriving from Italy as "totally unacceptable" and "incomprehensible." This was stated this Sunday in an interview with the newspaper La Stampa by the Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani. The former President of the Eurochamber criticized Pedro Sánchez for making the decision "solely as retaliation, without reason, harming tourism".

New setback for Sílvia Orriols. The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia (OAC) has opened an investigation into the mayor of Ripoll for alleged irregularities in the hiring of her daughter as a local police officer. The OAC procedure responds to a complaint, which has been admitted for processing and now moves to an investigation phase, in which it will be assessed whether it has merit. Last week, both in the plenary session and the following day in a press conference without questions, Orriols denied having influenced the hiring of her daughter as a local police officer and defended that she obtained "the best grade in a regulated selection process" for an emergency position.

It is often said that in politics everything has been seen: unnatural alliances, sudden changes of position or leaders who move to another party. In fact, moving from one party to another is not exceptional in Catalonia. With the 'Procés', leaders from the PSC or ICV joined ERC, representatives from Cs joined the PP with the decline of the orange party, and now Junts officials are moving to Aliança. What is not usual are the changes of allegiance between parties located at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

Before Lamine Yamal, Cubarsí, and Olmo won the World Cup, Piqué, Puyol, Xavi, and Busquets had already lifted the World Cup in 2010 in South Africa. They, however, were not the first Catalans to touch the coveted trophy. It was Jaume Marquet (Sabadell, 1976), popularly known as Jimmy Jump. Minutes before the final between Spain and the Netherlands began, he jumped onto the field to place a 'barretina' on the trophy, but security guards tackled him just as he had it in front of him, and he touched it. 'I was the first Catalan to touch a World Cup,' he emphasizes with pride.

Aliança Catalana started the week with morale through the roof after a survey by El Periódico placed it as the second force in the next elections to the Parliament. However, the Islamophobic party ends the week with a new controversy related to the management in the mayor's office of Ripoll that has put it in the eye of the hurricane: the hiring of Sílvia Orriols' daughter as an interim local police officer. Now the controversy does not revolve around whether her daughter, Guinadell, met the merits for the position, but rather whether the procedure offered sufficient guarantees of impartiality in the face of a possible conflict of interest.

The Ripoll City Council has hired one of the daughters of the town's mayor, Sílvia Orriols, as an interim local police officer. Orriols herself announced this at the plenary session on Tuesday evening and made it clear that she had not placed "anyone in a position" and that she had "absolutely abstained from participating in anything affecting the process," even though she was the one who appointed the tribunal formed by officers of the corps. "Just as I cannot benefit her with my position, I also cannot prevent her from fulfilling her dream," she stated in response to the opposition's reproaches. The position was announced as "urgent" to guarantee the "correct provision of service" given the "structural understaffing of officers," Orriols pointed out.

Another former Junts leader joins Aliança Catalana. And not just anyone. Oriol Giralt, the former head of Junts' list in Sant Andreu de Llavaneres in both 2023 and 2019, will be the candidate for Sílvia Orriols' party in the Maresme town. Giralt is not known for his political career, but for being the FC Barcelona member who in 2008 promoted a motion of no confidence against Joan Laporta.

The pro-independence organizations have presented this Tuesday the demonstration for the Diada of 2026, which will once again be decentralized as in recent years with demonstrations in Barcelona, Girona, and Amposta. In the Catalan capital, one column formed by the bulk of the population will leave from Casanova street with Gran Via and another youth column from the Cathedral square to join in Plaça de Catalunya, where the political act will take place.

Gerard Juny resigned this week as a militant of Aliança and head of communication in La Selva. "Aliança is too far left for me and too complexed," he stated, while admitting he would continue to vote for them because there was "nothing else." The young man from Girona made this decision after the leadership expelled the candidate in Figueres, Arnau Liesa, for maintaining a romantic relationship with a sixteen-year-old former student.

After some turbulent recent times with internal crises and opposing sectors, ERC experienced this Monday the birth of a new organization that does not seek to take control of the party, but rather to strengthen it and make it more attractive to sectors that have not yet approached it. This is the challenge undertaken by ERC deputies in the Parliament and Congress, Carles Campuzano and Francesc-Marc Álvaro, who have presented Esquerra Democràtica, an association affiliated with the republican formation, whose objective is to attract the centrist sovereignist vote.

The judge investigating actress Elisa Mouliaá for Íñigo Errejón's lawsuit for alleged slander ordered her arrest on Wednesday after she failed to appear for the third time. If her absence was surprising, even more so was the response of her new lawyer. "I have not recommended that she appear or not appear, because my ego is at shoe level and not in the clouds, and I am not the smart lawyer who arrives third and brainwashes her client to tell her that everything she has done before is wrong and that the previous lawyers are worse than me".

Aliança Catalana already has a candidate in Barcelona. He is "a man and he is known", as the party leader, Sílvia Orriols, said in February, but he is not the media personality she was presumably referring to, the publicist Lluís Carrasco. The mayoral candidate in the Catalan capital is Jordi Aragonès (Pineda de Mar, 1993), who presented his candidacy this afternoon at El Born Cultural Centre, with about 200 militants from all over the country. The Islamophobic formation had to resort to plan B after offers to Carrasco himself, Sandro Rosell, Jaume Giró and, as a last resort, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas failed.

“Not all candidates will be explicitly Catalan nationalists.” This is how Sílvia Orriols justified in an interview in May that there would be list leaders of Aliança Catalana in the municipal elections who would not be independentists. What was more difficult to imagine is that a former member of the far-right Fuerza Nueva of Blas Piñar, of the Comunión Tradicionalista Carlista, and later of Societat Civil Catalana would end up at Aliança Catalana.