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.

Ten months and a half remain until the municipal elections, and parties are still debating candidacies and programs. At Junts, moreover, they have an important decision to make: what will they have to do with Aliança Catalana (AC). To curb its growth before the elections, but also to know whether they should form alliances afterward, knowing that Sílvia Orriols' party has set its sights on replacing them. What does the leadership say, and what does the local sphere think?

The governing committee of Aliança Catalana has unanimously agreed this Sunday, in a meeting held at ten in the morning, to "withdraw confidence" in Arnau Liesa as the party's candidate for Figueres City Council and to initiate the procedures for his expulsion from the formation. As reported by the party in a statement, the decision was made after learning of a "personal situation" which, it asserts, had not been previously communicated and which it considers "incompatible with the foundational principles" of the political project. The committee adds that, once the decision was communicated, Liesa "has opted to voluntarily disassociate himself from the party," a fact that the party "appreciates".

Aliança Catalana lost its headquarters in Berga, as reported by ARA, at the beginning of June. In fact, very visible signs made it clear that it would be evicted the following month and neighbors were asked to stop graffitiing there, as it would become a regional museum. Now, however, in a plot twist, the far-right party has settled in the former premises of the independentist left in the capital of Berguedà. That is to say, the space where the Casal Panxo was, which was previously a hub of sovereignist anti-capitalism in the city, is now in the hands of Sílvia Orriols's Islamophobic party, as announced on social media.

I don't like the prospective electoral results suggested by opinion polls. More specifically, I dislike all results: not just those awarded to far-right parties. I mean that from a sovereignist point of view, which is mine, I believe they are not the results that would best suit the country. Neither the results of those who will supposedly be prime ministers again, nor those of whom strong rises are predicted, nor those who hold on, nor those of whom strong declines are foreseen.

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.

The government committee of Aliança Catalana is made up of six people: Sílvia Orriols, Oriol Gès, Jordi Aragonès, Lluís Areny, Aurora Fornos and Franc Massaneda. From this hard core of the party, the candidate for Barcelona in the municipal elections will most likely emerge. Areny is the most likely to be the mayoral candidate in the Catalan capital, according to what ARA has learned, although Aragonès could also be. "Right now there is an 80% chance that Areny will be the candidate," say sources from the formation.

Aliança Catalana has been inaugurating headquarters in recent months in different cities in the country such as Lleida, Tàrrega or Valls with an eye on the upcoming municipal elections. Now, however, Sílvia Orriols's formation will lose one. Specifically in Berga. The eviction will occur in a month's time and comes just after the leader of the Islamophobic formation was heckled a week ago at La Patum with slogans such as "Fascists out of La Patum!" or "Jump, jump, jump, fascist whoever doesn't jump!"

A few days ago, Floren Aoiz was in Palma, a Navarrese abertzale activist with a long trajectory, currently responsible for the area of political relations with the State of EH Bildu. Invited by the Darder Mascaró Foundations and the La Col·lectiva association, he granted an interview with Anna Mascaró, from Ara Balears, in which he said very interesting things. For example: “In Euskal Herria there is a greater tendency towards sovereignty among Basque speakers (...) but there are also many non-Basque speaking sovereigntists. In recent years, more: it is a growth linked to the perception that sovereignty offers an alternative for society as a whole. An alternative not only of the left, but also linked to society's ability to govern itself. To understand self-government in a certain direction, which is the defense of public services, the defense of better living and working conditions... A model of coexistence. In the case of Euskal Herria, the aspiration for sovereignty means that we want to obtain this sovereignty with respect to the Spanish and French states. But in the world we live in, it is also a demand for democratic sovereignty against capital, against international capital flows and decisions in which peoples have very little say”.It is so. Nine, ten years ago, when Catalan sovereignism was able to propose a true alternative, that is to say: a Republic based precisely on coexistence, equal opportunities (this implies the defense of public services and good living and working conditions), it had an absolute majority in Parliament, it confronted the Spanish state and obtained —briefly, but it obtained it— world attention. Many saw it as a threat to the established order, but this was precisely the greatness of the proposal and what made, in the eyes of many others, the Catalan Republic not seem like a threat, but rather a hope. The old order was what the Spanish state represented; the Catalan Republic represented —it promised— a step forward in rights and freedoms, a new 21st-century Republic, progressive, advanced, mature, capable of including citizens rooted in the past and those who have just arrived. A country founded on the Catalan language and culture, in dialogue with the languages and cultures of the world.Political defeat led to another self-inflicted defeat. A tortured abandonment in internal hemorrhages, psychodramas, obsessive searches for culprits, and idealizations of pasts supposedly better than they ever existed as invoked. Withdrawal, conservatism, and ultra-conservatism: the attitudes of the fearful and the opportunists who believe their moment has come to command something, even if it's just scraps. There are those who still insist on denying the existence of a Catalan far-right, even when it's right in front of them, and those who consider a poll sums to an "independentist majority" with the seats of Junts and ERC plus those of Aliança Catalana. This is indeed the direct path to definitive failure.

After decades of what was known as "Iberian exceptionalism" – the absence of radical right-wing formations in the peninsula's parliaments – this political spectrum has not only burst into the Parliament of Catalonia, but has done so twice over. A study by the Institute of Political and Social Sciences (ICPS), published this Wednesday, thoroughly analyzes the rise of Vox and Aliança Catalana (AC), two parties that, despite defending diametrically opposed national projects, are primarily fueled by the same electoral driver: rejection of immigration.The ICPS study challenges the idea that the growth of these parties is solely due to polarization and the management of the independence process. While the territorial conflict created the right climate for Vox, led by Ignasi Garriga, to enter Parliament in 2021 and Catalan Alliance, led by Sílvia Orriols, to do so in 2024, the real driving force behind both electorates is structural. Both parties fully exploit "welfare chauvinism," a strategy that advocates for public services to be reserved exclusively for "nationals." Both the party led by Santiago Abascal and Sílvia Orriols' party agree in their platforms to associate immigration and crime, demand the deportation of irregular immigrants and the expulsion of unaccompanied foreign minors (MENA), and call for drastic measures to expedite the eviction of squatters. Economically, they also go hand in hand: they propose fiscal cuts, the abolition of taxes such as inheritance and gift tax and wealth tax, criticize excessive public spending, and generally call for a strong boost to free market policies.

Aliança Catalana formally only has a presence in the town councils of Ripoll and Manlleu, after losing Ribera d'Ondara, although in some municipalities it has attracted defecting councilors. Many of them do not hide it and arrive at the plenary sessions with the organization's folders. Local representatives of the party also carry them in towns where they do not have representation and where they plan to fight in next year's municipal elections. "It is about campaigning before the elections," admits a party member. This pre-campaign is not done haphazardly. The plenary sessions are prepared even though Aliança does not have a voice there.

"We have been working for many, many years for the Patum to be a success, and above all an example of harmony, of sharing, of friendship and of joy, and the City Council's plea is that this continues to be so." In this way, the mayor of Berga, Ivan Sànchez, called on Wednesday to maintain the complicity of recent years at the start of the festival. This festive atmosphere has soured this Thursday, just one day later, due to the presence of Sílvia Orriols on the balcony of the City Council. The president of Aliança Catalana was met with an unprecedented booing at the first jump of the full Patum, in which the 'guita' carried the anti-fascist flag. Hundreds of people, some with whistles, have heckled the also mayoress of Ripoll with shouts such as "Out with fascists from the Patum!" or "Jump, jump, jump, fascist whoever doesn't vote!".

"Out of institutional respect, I remind you that the natural language is Catalan and, if you do not know it, I inform you that there are places available at the adult school. If you wish, I can give you an enrollment form." In this way, the mayor of Ripoll, Sílvia Orriols, reprimanded the new councilor of the PSC, Jorge Iglesias, who was debuting in the plenary session yesterday, for making his speech in Spanish. In a subsequent intervention, Morillo responded that he would do "the possible to learn Catalan", but asked the leader of Aliança Catalana that she "do the possible to carry out social actions". It all began when Iglesias, a retiree born in Montevideo and linked to the Ripollès region, intervened in the swearing-in and assured that he would carry out his activity "with the corresponding loyalty". The other socialist councilor, Paco Morillo, a resident of Ripoll, did not want to intervene in his debut as a councilor.

On February 5, 2015, Lluís Monge was the only socialist councilor accompanying the former mayor of Sabadell, Manuel Bustos, to the courts. The former mayor had to testify in the case of watches allegedly gifted to members of the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia (FMC) when he presided over the entity, as part of the Mercuri case. Upon leaving, Monge also acted as Bustos' spokesperson to deny that the money came from training courses and to justify the institutional gifts. That was one of the pieces of a proceeding that ended inconvicting Bustos to three years in prison in 2022.

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.