On June 17, 2023, the political reality of Ripoll changed completely. Silvia Orriols, under the banner of Aliança Catalana, became the first far-right pro-independence mayor in Catalonia, after Junts, ERC, the PSC, and the CUP failed to agree on forming an alternative government. The town of Ripoll, with about 11,000 inhabitants, deeply marked by the trauma of the 2017 Rambla attacks, became a key point in Catalan political geography and had a direct impact on the decisions of the national leaderships of the parties. The latest media case: that of the two socialist councilors who were sidelined amid reproaches for voting in favor of Orriols' budgets.

In the next municipal elections, as always, there will be movements on the electoral map. One of those that can already be clearly anticipated is the emergence of Aliança Catalana (AC) in many town halls, which will significantly alter the map of majorities. The far-right formation already made an appearance in 2023 with the mayorship of Ripoll, and some lists in other places. But if we pay attention to the trajectory indicated by the 2024 Parliament elections, what the polls say, and what the party's progressive territorial expansion suggests, that was just the beginning. With the data we have today, we can practically take for granted that next year the xenophobic party will have representation and an important role in many municipalities.

All recent surveys published in Catalonia, including the one from the ARA newspaper from the beginning of the month, agree in pointing to the growth of Aliança Catalana, an independence party with a xenophobic stance, mainly at the expense of Junts. This phenomenon represents a novelty in the history of Catalanism, which has always been predominantly inclusive and non-essentialist, and has a special capacity to penetrate what we have called the transversal axis of the far-right, an imaginary line that would connect Tortosa with Figueres through the interior of the country. That is why we wanted to visit these cities, along with Balaguer, Manresa, Vic, and Ripoll, to try to understand the factors that explain the growth of this vote.

The Parliament has stopped experiencing the tense episodes of the Procés era, but the arrival of the far-right, with the emergence of Vox and then Aliança Catalana, also causes moments of unease in the Catalan chamber. This Thursday, one such incident occurred that, far from being an anecdote, has generated accusations and calls for resignation.

Vic has exceeded the 50,000 inhabitants threshold for the first time. It has gained 20,000 in the last thirty years, representing an approximate increase of 66%, double the Catalan average in the same period. The region's omnipresent agri-food industry, especially the meat sector, is a magnet for foreign labor, which already accounts for 30% of the population, more than half of whom are of African origin.

Catalonia concentrates such a diversity and complexity that it is a kind of Port Aventura of politics, where you have everything multiplied by two and sometimes apparently contradictory processes intertwine.

Catalan Alliance has been announcing some of its mayoral candidates in recent weeks. Among the names announced are party leaders from regional capitals, as well as from other municipalities. Just last Monday, Mireia Alomà was presented as the candidate for Mataró. What it has not yet done is reveal who the candidates for the four provincial capitals will be. It was supposed to be done on Sant Jordi's Day, but the party admitted that the candidate planned for Barcelona backed out at the last minute and thiscaused the announcement of the party leaders for Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona to be postponed. In the capital of Gironès, as ARA has been able to learn, the candidate will be Marc Villafañe Valero.

The philosophers Jordi Corominas and Joan Albert Vicens call to combat the rise of the radical right with their essay Extrema dreta. Què ens hi juguem? (Eumo), where they provide arguments to debate ultra positions.

Just a year ago, the PSC spokesperson in Tiana, Miquel Santiago, announced his resignation. The decision took the local group by surprise, as they had planned for him to be the candidate in 2027 after being number 2 in the previous elections and for the party leader to step down due to poor election results, which confirmed the victory of an independent party, now with an absolute majority. Little did the socialists of this Maresme locality imagine that a year later Santiago would propose himself to be the leader of Aliança Catalana, a party at the opposite end of his beliefs.

There are many ways to divide Catalonia, but the most naive is the one that draws a line between "real Catalonia" and all invented or synecdochic Catalonias. There are people who believe they have discovered the DNA of authentic Catalanism at the Feria de Abril, organized by the powerful and doped lobby of Andalusian entities, where the rebujito and flamenco are starting to clash with the mojito and reggaeton (because, for the defenders of real Catalonia, plurality is synonymous with hispanicity and nothing more). From which it can be deduced that, if by an improbable migratory phenomenon, half a million Catalans were to move to live in Andalusia and a casteller group called Los Chiquitos de Fuengirola were formed there, a 4 of 9 with folre i manilles would be as Andalusian as the pilgrimage to El Rocío.It is as absurd to put the April Fair into the bag of Catalan culture as it would be to put the Oktoberfest and flamenco begin to stumble over the bourgeois.For this reason, the failure of the sovereignist process, with the marvellous swan song that was October 1st, constitutes a national drama: it was the occasion for Catalonia to take a step forward in a climate of democratic celebration and respect for plurality that had nothing to do with the system of punishment and repression that successive Spanish governments have imposed before and since. An independent Catalonia, or at least more sovereign, could it have managed its plurality better than it currently does? Resoundingly, yes. But the weakness of the sovereignist leaders and the inflexibility of the Spanish powers made impossible a country agreement, democratic yet plural, regarding individual and collective identities.That failure was not only of the sovereignists, but of the whole country, and also of a Spanishness(that of the real Spain?) which in the end needed the police and the judges to prevail. Now we are paying the consequences. We have public services in a mess, a situation of plunder that no one bothers to deny, and a vital but increasingly minoritized language. And above all, we have a disillusioned native element, which has lost the generosity of October 1st, and which in part has allowed itself to be seduced by the siren songs of the far-right. After the victory of batons over ballot boxes, did anyone expect anything else? It is very curious that those who most exclaim about the 'orriolista' rise are those who have made it grow, by subordinating Catalan identity to Spanish identity and beheading the democratic sovereignist parties, with a cynically conformist shrug of the shoulders –it's the market, friend–. And they will call us supremacists... How dare they!

Xavier Antich (la Seu d'Urgell, 1962) arrives at the newsroom of ARA just as the vote of the members to elect the new board of Òmnium Cultural begins, in which he is running for re-election with a transversal candidacy of Catalanism and without rivals.What has led you to run for re-election at a time when there is debate about whether leadership needs to be renewed?

Since its emergence as a leading player, many political parties have tried to find a way to react to the far-right. The radical populist right's ability to win over diverse voters, as well as to mobilize non-voters and profiles disconnected from politics, disconcerts many formations accustomed to playing on a different playing field. The far-right's rhetoric and the issues it raises, especially immigration, have fueled the desire to build a strategy to confront it. Whether out of conviction or electoralism, how to react to the far-right is a matter of concern and occupies minds.

The latest survey published by ARA predicts an increase in the two far-right parties, the Spanish nationalist one and the Catalan nationalist one. While Vox would obtain between 14 and 17 deputies, Aliança Catalana would multiply its representation by ten (or more), obtaining a range of between 20 and 22 deputies. If we believe the poll, in the upper range there would be more than a quarter of far-right parliamentarians in the chamber. These are serious figures that, before they become a political and social reality, require a rapid reaction from the country.

The joke of the moment: President Díaz Ayuso declares Madrid a “free territory of nationalisms and identity ideologies”, “the most heterogeneous region that exists because it is made up of all forms of being Spanish”. It sounded like a reverberation of one of Francoism's slogans: “España, una, grande y libre”, now concentrated in the capital.

Elisenda Carrera is no longer a councilor for Ara Vic. The Vic City Council reported this Wednesday that the Ara Vic councilor has formally requested to leave the political group and become a non-attached councilor. The decision comes the day after Xavier Farrés, the other councilor for the Vigatan formation of the defunct PDECat, announced that they would expel her if she did not leave the council, at a press conference in the consistory accompanied by other members of the party's executive. Her departure comes in response to rumors, as advanced by el ARA, which place her as the possible candidate for Aliança Catalana in Vic in the next municipal elections. "Expulsion no longer makes sense because it was her decision to leave the group," Farrés states in conversation with el ARA.

It was Saturday at eleven in the morning when a man repeatedly stabbed a woman in the back. Then he cut her throat. The Mossos investigation has not been able to determine that they knew each other: everything indicates that she was a victim chosen at random who had the worst of luck.

It is quite likely that the rise of Aliança Catalana reflected in mea culpa, more than one party and union will assume at least part of the responsibility. The most significant element of the shift we are discussing is, therefore, that a part of the pro-independence electorate has stopped prioritizing the national issue almost exclusively to begin emphasizing the issues listed before: immigration (perceived as excessive), security (repeat criminal offenses, etc.), or the preservation of ways of being and existing (the clothing of some Muslim women, etc.). According to CEO data the number of responses reinforcing the impression that there are more immigrants in Catalonia than actually live there has doubled... in just one year! We are therefore not facing a percentage anecdote, but a real change of direction. These perceptions –not necessarily correlatable with objective data– are the perfect fuel for any political formation that decides to articulate discontent in terms of cultural protection and defense of the territory.

The poll we published in ARA this weekend dared to put numbers on the political reality, which, no matter how much scientific basis the work has, always ends up causing an endless discussion. Especially when there are still more than two years to go until the parliamentary elections, if the Illa government manages to complete the legislature, because the political, economic, and social situation is only getting more tangled.This is the first observation: the growing discontent would not be directed against the PSC, nor against Esquerra or Comuns, who support it, but would take the form of a historic shift of a large part of the country's electorate towards the far-right, curiously not large enough to force a change of government but sufficient to send Junts from second to fifth position.The growth of Alianza Catalana and Vox is more than probable (we'll see if in these proportions), and it's noticeable as soon as you step outside. The protest vote against everything, especially with the extraordinary increase in immigration that Catalonia has experienced, would take the form of the far-right, exactly as happens in all democracies. But the case of Catalonia, with its own political system and the strong influence of the Spanish political system, would present some elements to consider.The idea that ““és català tot aquell que viu i treballa a Catalunya (i ho vol ser)”” has been blown to pieces. A good part of the Catalanist voter doubts the strength that that powerful machine for “fer catalans”, which were the street, the school, the economy, the television, and the income difference with Spain, could now have, which without having its own state yielded extraordinary results. They doubt because countries with their own states like France and the United Kingdom have many problems, and because the mix of an immigrant influx, a digital cultural bubble, religious differences, and the marginalization of Catalan in schools and the legal inferiority of the language seems like a perfect storm for Catalan identity. And however aggressive Aliança Catalana's expressions towards Muslims may be, a sense of urgency prevails. In the case of Vox, the growth factors would be the Spanish nationalist reaction to immigration, to separatism, and to Pedro Sánchez's government, which is dragging on for them. Economic problems for many families, uncertainty for young people, an inaccessible housing market, bleak prospects in the labor market, artificial intelligence... The punishment vote, on the contrary, is served.It is not so strange that Orriols and Rufián are the best-rated politicians. To be rated, you first have to be known, and Rufián's star has not stopped growing, especially in Spain, and from this Spanish circuit, he grows in Catalonia. And Orriols, although less known, is on everyone's lips. However, personal rating and votes do not always go together. History is full of highly rated but poorly voted politicians.Good morning.

There are definitions that allow us to approach the concept of the far-right. For example, a study by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) considers it "the most illiberal form a right-wing party can take" and highlights several characteristics, such as hostility towards liberal democracy, nativism, authoritarianism, and populism in its proposals. When, moreover, it contemplates the use of violence, we speak of the far-right. Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde explains that today nativism (the xenophobic way of understanding nationalism that adopts slogans in the style of "Home first") is the main trait that unites the global far-right. But, of course, how is the degree of nativism measured, taking into account, moreover, that there are traditional parties that apply similar policies? Or the degree of populism or hostility towards liberal democracy? Abstract concepts lead to subjective assessments and, in the case of Catalonia, where two parties commonly considered to be of the far-right coexist, we have a clear example.

The results shown by the survey published today by ARA, with all the precautions that a poll taken when no election is in sight entails, depict a profound and very worrying alteration of the Catalan party map. Basically, what is seen is a strong setback for the traditional centre-right parties, Junts and PP, who are overtaken by more radical and openly Islamophobic parties such as Aliança Catalana and Vox. The result is a much more polarized country with less room for broad consensus, and politically much more difficult to govern.