Fiscal hell is a concept that has been gaining ground on the right of parliamentary arcs. It was popularized by the president of Foment del Treball, Josep Sánchez Llibre, and has now been adopted as their own by parties ranging from the PP to Junts, including the far-right Vox and Aliança Catalana. It doesn't take much imagination to conclude that it is a frontal criticism of the current tax model in both Catalonia and the State. Now it is the turn of Carles Puigdemont's party, which in this week's plenary session in the Parlament has obsessively proposed to attack the taxation maintained by the Generalitat with a double initiative: to deflate personal income tax (IRPF) (to eliminate inflation from the Government's revenue) and to subsidize the inheritance and gift tax. Junts knows it will lose the vote (it will probably only have the PP, Vox, and Aliança on its side), but it intends for it to be the start of a cultural battle against the left.

The two councilors of the PSC of Ripoll who allowed Sílvia Orriols to approve the budgets thanks to their abstention were leaving office on Monday amid reproaches and with a clear warning to the party. "We want to state that the local branch does not share this decision in any case; what's more, it is in absolute disagreement. There is no member of the list who has shown any predisposition to take over from our councilors. This is a decision made unilaterally by the national leadership of the PSC," stated Enric Pérez and Anna Belén Avilés in a joint statement. In summary, the two councilors warned that no one from the candidacy would take over from them. Orriols resorted to irony in Wednesday's control session in the Parliament, thanking the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, for what the socialists are doing in Ripoll: "Thank you for the budgets, but above all for having dismantled the PSC, which has been a masterstroke," he snapped.

With the municipal elections of 2027 on the horizon, Alianza Catalana has been activating its machinery for months to find candidates, including a takeover bid for Junts officials and from the convergent space with the aim of incorporating them into their lists. But amidst meetings and calls left and right, there was an operation that was cooked up last year that aimed to take away the mayor of an entire county capital. As ARA has been able to learn, Alianza Catalana tried to sign the mayor of Figueres, Jordi Masquef, without success. An intermediary, Miquel, a grassroots militant of the far-right party in Empordà, got in touch with the Junts mayor, with whom they already knew each other. The mayor responded to his messages in November, stalled him, and finally rejected the offer, according to knowledgeable sources.

Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo have not seen each other, but they have been two of the protagonists in the meeting of numerous political leaders this Friday in Barcelona. They have not shared a stage, but the clash between the two Spanish leaders has once again become evident. While the Spanish president has argued that "the European Union must suspend the association agreement with Israel" after "flagrant violations of international law", the leader of the opposition in the State has clashed head-on, reproaching him for having "betrayed" allies in a staunch defense of NATO with criticism of Spain's approach to China.At the European Pulse Forum, organized by Politico and BeBartlet, Sánchez has argued that Europe must be "firm in the defense of a rules-based order": "We cannot be content with lamenting, we only have to look at Gaza to see the consequences of the violation of international order. Let us not allow a new Gaza in Lebanon", he warned, to defend the total veto of Israel. Precisely, he has presented Europe as a "hope for peace", especially in "times of wars in Gaza, the West Bank, Iran and Lebanon", all of them provoked by Israel and the United States, with whom he maintains a tough confrontation. With the will to guarantee European "autonomy" and not depend on Donald Trump –whom he did not name–, he has insisted on the idea of forming a European army "tomorrow", as well as a "common" foreign policy. But he has also defended ties with China that the PP criticizes and some signed trade agreements: "The government of Spain supports the Mercosur agreements", he said, and also "strengthening ties" with India, the US, and China, which he will visit again. "Sanchista" Europeanismsanchista has permeated his speech with the defense of the "capacity to dream" in European integration and he was encouraged by a phrase in English: "It feels good to be European" [Being European makes you feel good]. As an ally, he had already found the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, who said before his speech that "Sánchez's government will survive" and defended his "clear international leadership".Criticism from the PP

In turn, Feijóo has made a wholesale amendment to Sánchez's government and its international alliances. The PP leader has fully defended NATO, despite the twists and turns and the multiple conflicts initiated by the US president, Donald Trump. He even used the word "traitor" when reviewing Spain's position in Europe. "I know that many are worried that Spain has abandoned allies," he said, and warned that he has opted for "new allies" in recent conflicts that have clashed with traditional ones. "The European Union is not just a market, it is a commitment that is respected in good times and bad. As a minister told me, when one abandons Europe, one becomes a traitor to Europe," he snapped. In fact, he had specifically mentioned "technological alliances that contradict the principles of the EU," in reference to China. Is Pedro Sánchez the "traitor" Feijóo is talking about?

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Salou is suffering a political storm following the case of falsified or erroneous resumes. What has happened in this municipality in Tarragonès? Just as it happened with the former deputy secretary of the PP Noelia Núñez, who resigned due to liesBerrio did not submit the documentation within the two-month period, but she did so at the end of March, explaining that she had not had access to her corporate email. However, Berrio is not the only one involved in the resume case; other councilors were also implicated, some of whom still have qualifications that they have not accredited or rectified. Councilors from the government Júlia Gómez (PSC), Noelia Izquierdo (PSC), and Marçal Curto (ERC) had accreditation problems, as did opposition councilors Ignacio Duran (from the local party USAP) and the non-attached former Vox member Josefa Aguirre. In the plenary session, the mayor committed to dismissing anyone who lied, even though in practice it has only focused on Berrio.

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While Gabriel Rufián travels the State defending his idea of unity of the left, the right also has someone preaching the same. Less popular, retired, but capable of filling the auditorium of the select Círculo Ecuestre between his obsessions with ETA and conspiracy theories. Jaime Mayor Oreja, former Minister of the Interior and former leader of the Basque PP, who boasted in 2009 that his great-grandfather had banned Basque at home to "get out of the barn," has managed to gather leaders from the PP (Alejandro Fernández at the forefront) and Vox (Joan Garriga). All in all, to send them a message: "There is an 85% of things that unite us, let's be capable of offering an alternative".

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The Abat Oliba CEU University invested the former minister and former president of Congress Ana Pastor (PP) as doctor honoris causa on March 25, in recognition of her career. Taking advantage of the opportunity, the former politician, who accumulated two and a half decades of political activity in Spain until 2024, speaks to ARA.

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The expulsion of Javier Ortega Smith was the trigger that has allowed Vox's critics to light the fuse against the leadership. The definitive coup de grâce was on February 18, when the party kicked out the former Madrid leader, who, this time, has decided to go to war that he avoided during the January 2024 congress. This rebellion was followed by the Murcian leader, José Ángel Antelo, after the leadership offered him to be a regional candidate on the condition that he leave the provincial presidency, which he did not accept and was expelled from the group with an expediente to be eliminated. Vox's former spokesperson Iván Espinosa de los Monteros –who stepped down in August 2023 and already launched a foundation to influence last September–, joined in, activating the call for an extraordinary congress. And the resignation of the former Castilian-Leonese vice-president Juan García-Gallardo has also been added, who stepped down in February of last year. A series of movements that show the critics' offensive against the leadership of Santiago Abascal.

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"First, those at home" is an anti-immigration slogan that became popular in the Principality under the influence of Josep Anglada and his Plataforma per Catalunya. Numerous Vox leaders, such as parliamentary spokesperson and provincial president of Barcelona, Joan Garriga, as well as deputy Mònica Lora and other members like Jordi de la Fuente, were part of Anglada's party and now feed Santiago Abascal's organization, recycling slogans like the most emblematic one. L'ARA already revealed last year that Vox had resurrected this slogan, but now it has decided to go a step further and display it throughout Catalonia with posters featuring the slogan, in Catalan and Spanish. They have created two designs that they have distributed by province.

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The far right is not making as much progress as it would like across France, but it is gaining new municipalities and strengthening its position in Northern Catalonia. National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen's party, already secured the mayorship of Perpignan a week ago with an absolute majority in the first round, and this Sunday it won in the second round of the municipal elections In Ribesaltes and Cañoses, in Roussillon. The far-right politician Steve Fortel also won in Elna, and Gilles Foxonet, another far-right politician, retained his position in Baixàs. "It's a lesson for the future of Catalonia and Spain: simply calling them fascists isn't enough," former mayor of Elna Nicolas Garcia told ARA. "We Catalans can't win," added Forques councilor Jordi Vera, who emphasized that 60% of the population comes from outside Northern Catalonia.

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Vox has decided to expel the former vice-president of Castile and León, Juan García-Gallardo, for a very serious offense, as ARA has been able to confirm, and not long ago it also kicked out the former leader of the party in Madrid, Javier Ortega Smith – he is still in the City Council. Another figurehead of the Spanish far-right, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, has shown himself to be equally or more critical than them of Santiago Abascal, but the party prefers, for the moment, not to act against him. The difference, according to sources from the party leadership, is that Espinosa "has not accused" anyone from the leadership of anything, but rather has criticized the party's political direction.

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She is neither a spokesperson nor does she hold any official position within the parliamentary group, but in mid-February she was the one who spoke during the question period for the president, Albert Dalmau's last as substitute for Salvador Illa, who was on sick leave at the time. She is Vox deputy Júlia Calvet Puig, born in 2001. She is one of the people being promoted by the far-right party, and sources within the party consulted by ARA describe her as "their bet for the future" in Catalonia.

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This has been a week of campaigning across France for Sunday's second round of municipal elections, but not in Perpignan, where the first round saw far-right mayor Louis Aliot win a reelection with 50.61% of the vote. He swept the board after absorbing a segment of the traditional right wing, even with the public support of former mayor Jean-Marc Pujol, his long-time rival who lost in the 2020 elections and who had presided over the city council for eleven years. In February 2020, he received former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont with full honors before holding his massive rally of 100,000 people in Perpignan to show solidarity with the exiled leader, after his municipal government had already supported those facing repression on several occasions. Pujol is a conservative from the Republicans party, which governed in coalition with the Catalan nationalist party Unitat Catalana, but now considers Aliot to represent "the right."

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Last September Jaume Veray resigned as president of the PP of Girona to make way for the young Empordanès Daniel Ruiz, until then general secretary in the province. To form a tandem, Ruiz chose as his number two a name that the party did not make public: Alfonso Sánchez Fisac, former deputy of Ciutadans in the legislature of the 1-O referendum (until 2020) and former councilor of Tossa de Mar (2019-2023), before joining the popular ranks. That decision, however, has not stopped accumulating criticism, and one of the most vocal concerns the fact that he lives in Barcelona.

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There's no respite for the People's Party (PP) in Barcelona, ​​and a new firestorm is engulfing the party's leader in the city, Daniel Sirera. According to information obtained by ARA, former municipal spokesperson Alberto Fernández Díaz has filed an internal complaint against Sirera, alleging that he "violated" party statutes regarding appointments to district councils and also concerning "memberships." The power struggle continues and is escalating, with the internal complaint now in the hands of the national PP leadership. Despite everything, Alberto Núñez Feijóo's leadership has not changed course in this conflict: for now, the complaint is shelved, and support for Sirera remains unwavering, as this newspaper has confirmed.

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The Junts Guarantees Commission decided on February 2 to freeze the internal investigation into two complaints it received against Toni Comín for "psychological, sexual, and physical harassment", according to an internal party report to which ARA has had access. The body has opted to shelve the two cases, for at least four months for now, despite being aware of the European Parliament's resolution upholding the complaint for psychological and sexual harassment filed in the parliamentary chamber against the former Minister of Health by a former assistant. Furthermore, as confirmed by ARA with several Junts sources, the party handed over to the MEP the complaint filed by the alleged victims and "the accompanying documentation", such as "the writings in which each of them explains the facts" and also the confidential resolution of the European Parliament.

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Catalan nationalism in Northern Catalonia will face a crucial test this Sunday in the municipal elections. Beyond understanding the state of the movement, the keystone is Perpignan. The northern Catalan capital is the largest city in France with a mayor from the far-right National Rally party, Louis Aliot, who recently told EFE that he is not "anti-Catalan," only "anti-independence," and that he defends "Catalan culture," despite having vetoed a wedding conducted in Catalan because he insisted on French. Sant Jordi has been cornered in the middle of his progressive change of the cityWith over 120,000 inhabitants, Perpignan accounts for a quarter of the population of Northern Catalonia, which is approaching half a million, and is the main battleground for Catalan nationalism, which is also divided there. Perpignan's importance helps explain why the leader of the French far right, Jordan Bardella, and the far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have both landed there. How does Catalan nationalism approach the elections?

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Compiling all the grants awarded in Catalonia on a website that acts as a search engine, filtered by beneficiary and showing who grants them. That's what 32-year-old Gerard Martínez Adsuar, from Caldes de Montbui, has done, sparking a public debate this week with the viral success of Subvencions.cat. Why? The website suddenly stopped working and was restored after a few days. The outage, however, resulted in the loss of one million records. This data became inaccessible from the Catalan government's portals. The government has justified the outage by citing problems with the data "upload," which they assure will be resolved soon. Well done, Martínez Adsuar. He already put forward his hypothesis on Thursday night on X"Before the change, proper names appeared, often those of migrants, associated with a tax identification number (CIF) that belonged to associations. I don't think this should have happened."

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Junts has chosen a political family in Europe. After being left without one in 2018Carles Puigdemont's party is on the verge of joining the European Democratic Party (EDP), which is part of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament. Several sources consulted by ARA explain that the pro-independence party is finalizing its entry, although the maneuver has stalled at the last minute due to internal reservations within the centrist and social-liberal European party.

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