The two PSC councilors from Ripoll who allowed Sílvia Orriols to approve the budgets thanks to their abstention left on Monday amid reproaches and with a clear warning to the party. "We want to state that the local group in no way shares this decision; moreover, 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 adopted unilaterally by the national leadership of the PSC," stated Enric Pérez and Anna Belén Avilés in a joint statement. Without mincing words, the two councilors warned that no one from the candidacy would replace them. For her part, Orriols thanked the Catalan President, Salvador Illa, for the socialist abstention in Wednesday's control session: "Thank you for the budgets, but above all for having dismantled the PSC, which has been a masterstroke," she retorted.

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.

Ripoll's politics has acquired national relevance, with media overexposure of its councilors due to the arrival of Aliança Catalana. This week, the municipal spokesperson for the PSC, Enric Pérez (Ripoll, 1980), has experienced this. After his group abstained and allowed Silvia Orriols' budget approval, the indignant socialist leadership summoned the two councilors, and they put their positions at the party's disposal.

Earthquake in the PSC. The socialist municipal group of Ripoll acknowledges "the error that the abstention in the City Council's budget plenary session represents" which allowed Aliança Catalana to approve them, and the two councilors of the group have placed their positions at the party's disposal. They did so after meeting with the PSC federation of the Girona regions, which had previously issued a statement distancing itself from the decision made by the municipal group. "This decision does not have the endorsement or prior knowledge of this federation," stated the federation, which had summoned the two councilors "immediately" to "demand explanations and act accordingly.

The Islamophobic shouts at the Cornellà-El Prat stadium during the match between Egypt and Spain have gone around the world and are a very worrying exponent of the level of disinhibition of the extreme right everywhere. The case is especially regrettable because the best player of the Spanish national team and probably of the world is a Catalan of Muslim religion named Lamine Yamal, raised in the Rocafonda neighborhood of Mataró. The Barça star has sent a forceful message through social networks and has branded the "racists" and "ignorant" the scoundrels who on Tuesday chanted all sorts of insults, including to Pedro Sánchez, at the Espanyol stadium.

We read in ’ARA that Vox resorts to Catalan only in the regions where Sílvia Orriols' party is strong. They have made posters with the slogan of Plataforma per Catalunya, “First our own people”, in one language or another, depending on the market, and so on. In the provinces of Barcelona and Tarragona you will see the posters in Spanish, while in Girona and Lleida you will see them in Catalan.

The Arran of Les Corts branch claimed last January the destruction of an Aliança Catalana tent in Plaça Comas, Barcelona. During the attack, a far-right party militant fell to the ground from a push by an independentist left-wing member and was evacuated to Sagrat Cor Hospital with a severe head injury. The Mossos would arrest three people a couple of months later who are awaiting trial.

The ERC deputy in Congress Francesc-Marc Álvaro presented the book, but it was another republican in Madrid who took the party president's message. "I went to jail for Catalunya, not because Colau is a deputy on an Esquerra list." Oriol Junqueras has cut short the unitary list of the left promoted for weeks by Gabriel Rufián with the collaboration of his former colleague in the lower house, Joan Tardà. In fact, a few days ago Tardà himself suggested in an interview in Público that Colau be number 2 on a list headed by Rufián and that David Fernàndez (CUP) also be in third position.

Alejandro Fernández (Tarragona, 1976) feels strengthened at the helm of the PP of Catalonia and has left behind his differences with Alberto Núñez Feijóo.Can you explain to us what the PP's position is regarding the war in Iran?

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.

"There are many people who live and work here and will never be Catalan." This is how forceful Sílvia Orriols was, in a conference at Fòrum Europa Tribuna Catalunya, in mid-February. She was referring explicitly to the Muslim community in our country, because she considers their integration into Catalan society to be impossible. It was not the first time that the leader of Aliança Catalana, a declared Islamophobe, had made such a statement. It is part of a recurrent discourse that she has expressed since she arrived at the Ripoll Town Council in 2019. This stance clashes with the definition of Catalan identity traditionally defended by Catalanism. It is a total amendment to one of the most famous phrases of former president Jordi Pujol: "He is Catalan who lives and works in Catalonia and wants to be." During his long tenure, the leader of Convergència never tired of repeating this idea, a result of the debate about who was Catalan with the arrival between 1950 and 1970 of thousands of immigrants from various parts of Spain. Pujol defended civic integration, not integration by origin, under the premise that being Catalan did not depend on being born in Catalonia, but on wanting to be part of the country. He also sought to avoid social division for fear of creating two separate communities: that oforiginal Catalans and that of immigrants. And finally, with the desire for Catalanism to broaden its social base.

The leader of the far-right Catalan independence movement, Sílvia Orriols, once again displayed her Islamophobia this Tuesday, a cornerstone of her political project, as she herself claims. In an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, the head of Aliança Catalana (AC) defended banning the Quran, the holy text of Muslims, arguing that "what it says is barbaric." She didn't stop there: "The Bible also contains phrases taken completely out of context, but the beauty of it is that we Christians know how to contextualize and update them; we don't interpret them literally," she said, in a direct attack on the capabilities of Muslims. "Their own religion says so; the Quran is not open to interpretation," she added, although this premise only applies to certain branches of Islam. The mayor of Ripoll also began the interview by confessing that she lives with "great hope." the US and Israeli attack on Iran"One of the most terrifying regimes in the world could fall," celebrated the woman who, on other occasions, has had no problem expressing her support for Donald Trump. In this regard, she denounced the opposition to the war of Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, whom she criticized for "playing at ambiguity and mediocrity" and for "not being able to stand up for human rights." The far-right leader was referring to the rights of the Iranian population, long repressed by the authorities in Tehran, but she omitted the massacres of the same population that are being caused by the bombs coming from Washington and Tel Aviv.

"Manresa cannot have an open door to the ocean and welcome everyone indiscriminately and without control". "We have to be able to say enough". "Manresa is saturated". "We have imported a model of delinquency from the Third World". "It cannot be that Catalonia has been the country that in the last 25 years has received the most immigration". "Manresa must be a more prosperous, safer, more ours, more Catalan city". The first three sentences were said by Ramon Bacardit (Junts). The last three by Sergi Perramon ("Avanç Nacionalista).

Josep Maria. This is how opponents of Aliança Catalana sarcastically call a militant or sympathizer of Sílvia Orriols' party. It is an ironic stereotype to describe a profile of a traditional and conservative middle-aged man who used to vote for Convergència and has now switched to Aliança. There are even users on social media who use this name to ridicule the Islamophobic formation, emphasizing the lack of women at their events or stalls. Beyond the sarcasm, the data supports the party's male bias. Only 19% of the party's 2,500 militants are women, meaning fewer than 500, despite it being a new party that continues to grow in membership, and it is the only one, along with the Comuns, that is led by a woman. It is the lowest figure among parties with representation in Parliament, according to data provided by the political forces themselves, at the request of ARA. Vox, the other far-right formation, has a similar problem and only counts on 24.5% women among its membership. Following behind are the PP, with 32.2%; the CUP, with 34.1%; ERC, with 35.15%, and Junts and Comuns, with 40%. The PSC is the most feminized party with 49.1%.The profile of an Aliança militant resembles that of its voter: it is also the party with the fewest female voters. According to the latest poll by the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO), published in November, out of every 100 voters of the far-right party, only 39 are women compared to 61 who are men. And this statistic also goes hand in hand with Vox, which has 43% women and 57% men as voters. For their part, the percentage of women who say they will vote for the CUP is 45%, Junts and PP have 48%, while women are the majority among voters for Comuns (52%), ERC (54%), and PSC (56%). This low percentage of women in parties makes it difficult to form lists for municipal elections. This was acknowledged by the mayor of Ripoll during the first municipal convention, held in early February in Ripoll. The party leader admitted the difficulties they face in adapting to electoral regulations, which require the formation of zipper lists with parity between men and women. The law for effective equality between women and men, approved in 2007, establishes that in municipalities with more than 3,000 inhabitants, in each block of five candidates, no sex can have less than 40% of representatives. Thus, for example, among the first five places, there must be a minimum of two men and two women. This balance, which is not subject to whether the mayoral candidate is male or female, means that Aliança is aware that lists may be at risk due to a lack of women. "We will work to reverse this trend," stated the leader of Aliança during the municipal convention with an eye on the next elections. and can aspire to obtain the maximum number of councilors, this lack of women in their ranks also plays a key role.

Nobody likes to speak ill of their country. Me neither. Self-criticism is tedious. It's easier to relativize, to look the other way, to see the speck in someone else's eye and not the log in your own. It's uncomfortable to put your finger on your own wounds. When the wound is open, it hurts. In this article, I do just that: apply a good splash of alcohol to see if our political, social, economic, and cultural body reacts. I confess I don't have much hope. The warning signs are clear.

Tempting offer from Aliança Catalana in the heart of Catalonia. And doubly so. And rejected once again. Sílvia Orriols' party proposed to Manresa councilor, Sergi Perramon, to be the candidate in the capital of Bages. If he accepted the proposal, Perramon would also be the candidate for Barcelona in the next Catalan elections. The councilor, who had run for the Front Nacional de Catalunya (FNC), from which Orriols split, has once again rejected the offer, as he himself confirmed to ARA. "Jordi Coma called me on behalf of the president on the last day of the year and I rejected it," he says, referring to the party's advisor in Parliament. The leadership has declined to confirm the information, when questioned by this newspaper.

In the last municipal elections, Aliança Catalana, making its debut, only ran in three towns, and in all three—Ripoll, Manlleu, and Ribera de Ondara—it won seats. However, in the latter two towns, the lead candidates are no longer councilors. The leadership distanced itself after various controversies and disagreements. They were right, then, about where to field candidates, but not about choosing the right ones to lead them.

Roger Saborit breaks with Aliança Catalana. The first councilor the Islamophobic party had in Manlleu has decided to part ways with Sílvia Orriols' party. Saborit already resigned his council seat last May and ceded his position toa well-known Espanyol supporterJordi Rierola, from the municipality, cited work-related reasons (he works as a truck driver) for leaving the City Council, but there are other reasons behind his departure. Saborit himself explains, having contacted ARA to explain what prompted him to leave the party. "I'm leaving Alianza because of the lack of involvement and communication, and the internal sabotage," summarizes the former councilor from the city of Osona. Saborit explains that the party's lack of support when he was a councilor upset him. "They abandoned me. Once I won the council seat, they left me when I needed support, and I had to deal with it all on my own when, with my trucking job, I didn't have the time." He reveals that they assigned him an external assistant to prepare the paperwork, but that the assistant was remote and he couldn't always count on him when he needed him. "I expected much more support, and when I called or wrote to Silvia (Orriols) with a question, she wouldn't answer the phone or reply," he laments. This is especially concerning given his crucial role in hastily putting together the candidacy: "We created a Frankenstein list. From number 3 onwards, they were acquaintances we convinced to join in order to reach the 21 people needed, and half of them got on the list because of me." The difficulties in forming a candidacy for the second most important municipality in Osona are now recurring, and, as ARA reported, Management is considering not doing it if they can't find peopleThe final straw was the drawing up of the lists, but for the Catalan Parliament. Saborit claims that the party leadership initially offered him the number 3 spot for Barcelona, ​​but ultimately moved him down to sixth. "If you're deeply involved in a project and then see that they're not counting on you, it's disappointing," he says. He was one of the party's first members. In fact, he was member number 33, and now the party has 2,500 members after entering Parliament: "It was a coincidence that I got that number," he says, referring to the fact that it symbolizes the Catalan "Catalunya" that the far-right separatists defend, alluding to the third letter of the alphabet.

The leader of Aliança Catalana, Sílvia Orriols, arrived at the Hotel Palace in Barcelona, ​​formerly the Ritz, to outline her political project at a conference in the Fòrum Europa Tribuna Catalunya, which had to be postponed from the end of the year. Orriols made no secret of her hope that the upcoming municipal elections will consolidate her party's growth. She stated that she is confident the cordon sanitaire imposed on her by other parties will have eased after the elections. Orriols offered Junts the possibility of forming a coalition government after the elections. "We will govern with Junts if our program is implemented," she affirmed, after admitting that she feels closer to Carles Puigdemont's party than to Vox or the CUP. And yet, just moments before, she had accused Junts of deceiving the pro-independence movement and guaranteed that with her as president, "independence wouldn't have lasted eight seconds, nor would I have resigned the presidency because of Article 155, which was just a fax," conveniently ignoring the political prisoners and the fact that Puigdemont has been in exile for nine years.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo has concluded that to reach La Moncloa (the Prime Minister's residence) he needs to coexist with uncomfortable neighbors, such as Vox. There is, therefore, no alternative. In fact, what he now needs to demonstrate is that PP-Vox governments work, and that this is a model that can be replicated in the Spanish executive branch. The dream of governing alone, already difficult for most of his supporters, is a distant prospect. malesThis is arithmetically impossible in a Parliament where Catalan and Basque votes also come into play, as is the case in the Congress. However, this coexistence can be, for many reasons, even more complex than the one Pedro Sánchez faces with his partners. Why? Because the political paradigm is changing at breakneck speed before our very eyes.