The budgets of the Generalitat are not the only ones that attract the interest of parties and the media. A hundred kilometers north of Plaça Sant Jaume in Barcelona, there are other accounts that also mark Catalan politics. In Ripoll, the municipal government plans to put this year's budgets, which have not yet been approved, to a vote on March 31, in the middle of Holy Week, as ARA has learned. The last and only ones approved by Sílvia Orriols since she became mayor, those of 2025, caused a real earthquake both locally and nationally. If this year's are not approved, the mayor threatens to face a vote of confidence again.

Last week, Chantal Pérez, the ERC spokesperson in Ripoll, announced that she was stepping aside and would not be running again as the lead candidate in the upcoming elections. She will also not be in any of the top positions on the ballot and will end her time on the city council, which began in 2019 as the number two candidate. Pérez, who will remain a councilor until the end of her term, appealed for the need to regenerate party leadership in the capital of the Ripollès region. In her farewell letter on social media, the Republican leader asked that the future candidate "not be linked to everything that has happened in recent years, in order to restart synergies." The wounds opened by the failure to prevent the leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, obtain the mayoral staffAnd even after she retained her position, the repercussions are still lingering. So much so that Junts and the CUP, the other two pro-independence parties in the council, will also change their mayoral candidates. These two parties, however, already saw their candidates, Manoli Vega of Junts and Dani Vilaseca of the CUP, who were also newcomers, resign halfway through their term.

"Wow, how beautiful." The comment is from one of the members ofPremium ClubThe ARA newspaper reporter, upon seeing the majestic portal of the Santa Maria de Ripoll monastery, was captivated by one of the jewels of Romanesque art. The large group of subscribers (all places were sold out) were awestruck by this masterpiece. Their fascination with the image conveyed by this great sculpted stone—an open bible divided into heaven, earth, and hell—contrasted sharply with the reaction of the ARA journalist accompanying them. A Ripoll native, he was accustomed to this portal, which time has transformed into a routine entrance for baptisms and masses for the locals. Surely, all Ripoll residents should take this guided tour at least once a year.

It's possible that if Silvia Orriols hadn't won the mayoralty of Ripoll, the Catalan Alliance would never have entered Parliament. Today, this remains a mystery, but what is certain is that neither of these two events would have happened without the participation of Margarita Cabello. This retired woman from Ripoll is the founder and number one member of the Catalan Alliance. "I started it all," she tells ARA from the room where she taught extracurricular English classes to the town's children. It was in this small room with a balcony overlooking Ripoll's Plaça Gran and from which an estelada (Spanish flag) flutters that it was agreed to present a candidacy for the far-right party in the 2019 municipal elections.

The mayor of Ripoll, Silvia Orriols, has already secured the new civility ordinances. After a failed first attempt in the summer, the municipal plenary session initially approved the new regulations, with the favorable votes of Aliança, Junts, and Som-hi Ripoll. The difference between the text Orriols presented at the plenary session on Monday and what she presented a few months ago is that, in the approved version, the ban on the Islamic veil that the far-right mayor intended to introduce is absent. In response to this change, the Junts municipal group decided to vote in favor, responding, they argue, to the requests of "residents and merchants" to address the problems of "insecurity and incivility" in Ripoll. ERC, PSC, and CUP voted against, criticizing the punitive approach of the text submitted to the plenary session.

Comrade Xavi Tedó wrote a report on the impressions of the "Muslim community" of Ripoll that had this headline: "Sílvia Orriols doesn't want us to integrate, she wants us out of here". The subtitle read: "The Muslim community of Ripoll, disappointed with Junts for having distanced itself from the motion against the Catalan Alliance." The report featured Mohamed Bahloul, who was having tea in the Esperanza café, "meeting point for the Muslim community in Ripoll"; Bilal Elkasmi, president of the El Fath Association, which manages one of the two mosques; Rashid Elmarajie, a faithful who was leaving prayer, and Omar Elabdali, president of the Moroccan Youth Association of Ripollès.

In recent weeks, Mohamed Bahloul has not only been concerned about ensuring that all the dishes in the Molló restaurant where he works as a cook are prepared as his boss requests. In the afternoons, when he went to the Esperanza café, a meeting point for the Muslim community in Ripoll, he had to inform his compatriots about how the negotiations were going to oust the mayor Silvia Orriols: "Everyone was expectant, they asked me if the parties would agree to get her out." Between games of checkers or Barça or Madrid matches (here the clientele is divided) and savouring a hot tea despite the fact that it does not seem like a winter like the ones before, Bahloul explained to them what he was getting into.

After the failure of the motion of censure against Silvia Orriols, frustrated by Junts' last-minute backtracking, the far-right mayor will continue to lead the Ripoll City Council until at least 2027. The leader of Aliança Catalana has already been in office for twenty months, almost two years into her mandate, and during all this time in government she has left her mark on the municipality. This week, the ARA has toured the streets of the town, speaking to residents of all opinions and consulting the main entities, associations and groups in the town, to draw up an x-ray and take stock of these almost two years of far-right Ripoll government.

The cordons sanitaires against the extreme right were designed to prevent it from ever coming to power. In France, in Germany or in Catalonia. The original idea was basically the same and consisted in thinking that, without decision-making capacity or loudspeakers, the extreme right would end up invisible. In general, it has become evident that containing the extreme right is much more complicated than applying a cordon sanitaire, but the magic recipe to achieve this has not been found either. The curious thing about the Catalan case is that the cordon sanitaire is applied in theory, but not in practice.

"There is no cordon sanitaire in Ripoll," he said. This Tuesday, Junts councillor Ferran Raigon after her party backed out at the last minute of the motion of censure to oust the far-right mayor Sílvia Orriols. In fact, since the leader of Aliança Catalana has occupied the highest position in the Ripoll council, there has never been a cordon sanitaire. To date, 25 plenary sessions have been held, with more than a hundred motions on the agenda, most of them presented by the governing team. She has not managed to approve any that linked immigration and insecurity, as she has repeatedly tried and, of the rest, many have ended up being rejected as a result of the minority of Aliança Catalana in the municipal plenary. But Orriols has not lived politically isolated in this last year and a half in Ripoll. In fact, it was common for her to approve motions with the votes of one or another opposition party. The party that voted most often with Aliança was, precisely, Junts.

Has Juntos made a mistake? retiring at the last minute of the motion of censure against the mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols? It is a question that does not have an easy answer.

"The opposition municipal groups, aware of their responsibility to the citizens, have decided to promote a motion of censure to reverse this blockage and recover a governability based on dialogue, agreement and consensus." The five-way pact, which would have given the mayorship of Ripoll to the councillor Maria Soldevila, ended up failing at the last minute. by the intervention of the national leadership of Junts, but it was ready to be signed, as all the sources consulted in recent days – including those from Junts – stressed. The ARA has accessed the draft that was being worked on in Ripoll, advanced by SER Catalunya, which shows that the negotiations had reached a point of concretion that only required the signature of the future government partners.

The president of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, has popularised an expression that has become the motto of Junts. The important thing in every situation, he says, is to "hold your position". Holding your position is synonymous with setting a position and maintaining it no matter what happens without giving in to pressure. In the case of the motion of censure against Aliança Catalana in Ripoll, however, Junts has not held its position, but the impression it gives is that it has bowed to the threats and insults of Silvia Orriols, who in recent days had multiplied in appearances and on the networks to attack the entire opposition, but especially the big one. On Catalunya Ràdio she called them "resentful" and spoke of a "coup d'état", but this tweet from Monday in response to Puigdemont is especially revealing: "I will fall in Ripoll, but you will fall in Catalonia."

"Ripoll is Ripoll and they are addressing the issue from Ripoll. All due respect [...]. Ripoll's issues must be decided in Ripoll. When there is news, Junts Ripoll will announce it." This was how the secretary general of the councillors, Jordi Turull, responded to journalists on Monday at a press conference in Barcelona about the negotiations for the motion of censure to oust Sílvia Orriols from the mayor's office. Now, one thing is what was said publicly and another is what had been brewing in the party for weeks: despite the fact that Ripoll councillors were negotiating with Esquerra and the PSC the possibility of a pact to remove the far right from the government, the "general" opinion of the national executive of Junts was against ousting Orrio. Including former president Carles Puigdemont, who has been involved in the conversations between the national leadership and Junts Ripoll, which on Monday night ended up adopting Barcelona's criteria. "We have reached the decision together," one of the sources consulted reaffirms, without hiding that it has been "difficult."

There will be no vote of no confidence in Ripoll. Juntos has ended up being eliminated and the Aliança Catalana mayor will continue in office and, in addition, with the budgets approved from Monday. This was explained by the formation chaired by Carles Puigdemont in a joint statement between the national leadership and that of the party in Ripoll, and in the afternoon they made their voice heard. "We want to defeat hate speech at the polls," said the general secretary of the council, Jordi Turull, pointing towards 2027. Why, then, have they been negotiating with the opposition for almost a month? Juntos has not finished clarifying it, but councillor Ferran Raigon has stressed that there have been no substantial differences with ERC, the PSC and the CUP, with whom they have negotiated specific areas of government. However, he described the executive that would have resulted as a "Frankenstein government". Silvia Orriols was seen in the afternoon at the town hall, laughing and celebrating with the rest of the Aliança councillors the conclusion of the farce that she herself provoked a month ago when she submitted to – and lost – the vote of confidence.

Negotiations to oust Silvia Orriols from the Ripoll mayoralty are moving forward. According to SER Catalunya and confirmed by ARA, the talks are progressing at a good pace to form a three-way agreement between Junts, ERC and the PSC, after the socialists have agreed to enter the municipal government. Socialist sources stress that it is still to be finalised and that they will make it public when they have met with everyone, waiting for the "loose ends" to be closed, which all sources confirm are still open. Municipal sources familiar with the talks add that the agreement is increasingly "closer" and that "the question on the table is when it will be made public". Some of the areas of government that each party will assume have yet to be defined, and whether the mayor's office will be only for Junts - the first force with three councillors - or if it will be shared with ERC - the second force with three representatives. Although the agreement is just around the corner, there is still nervousness among the negotiators, because in the 2023 talks everything went up in smoke at the last minute and Orriols became mayor. The meetings will continue this Tuesday.

The countdown begins for the question of confidence that must determine the future of Ripoll City Council. The deadline for opposition parties to approve a motion of censure against Mayor Sílvia Orriols expires in 10 days, but, for the moment, they have not officially reached any agreement. If we do not form an alternative majority before Monday, February 24, the budgets of the municipal government of Aliança Catalana will be automatically approved, without a plenary session or a vote, and Orriols will continue to lead the Ripollés council. After this deadline, the option of a motion of censure would remain open (it is always available to the opposition), but the leader of Aliança would already have approved accounts to carry out the mandate.