"The espadrille or the swastika. You choose." The question was asked in an article this very week by the former president of the Generalitat and leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, after in the Parliament chamber Junts, ERC, CUP and Comuns displayed the famous poster "Let's crush fascism", created in 1936 by the photographer and publicist Pere Català i Pic. Well, there is at least one Junts councilor who chooses the swastika. It is Roger Pinart, second deputy mayor of Port de la Selva, who has published a clear message on social media. "In this case, swastika", he wrote on X, responding to Junts' unequivocally anti-fascist post: "Against hate, now and always. With President Companys, now and always".

Professor emeritus of political science, writer and intellectual who has made radical ideological shifts, Ramón Cotarelo (Madrid, 1943) is now the muse of Aliança Catalana. He has spent a week dragging controversy following his gloss of the Diada in Ripoll, in which he encouraged waging war against Islam. Even the Ripoll City Council distanced itself from it, although its mayor and leader of Aliança, Sílvia Orriols, applauded the manifesto, lamenting, mind you, that "it was not the context nor the appropriate place," in her opinion.

In a recent interview with El País the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk spoke about the latest elections in Saxony-Anhalt and noted that the emergence of Alternative for Germany is causing the normalization of far-right ideas. One of the most interesting points in the interview is that Sloterdijk points out a factor that could be affecting Western democracies more than we might think: that of polls, which in recent times have increased exponentially and occupy a considerable space in the political sections of the media. Every week we are given polls, says the philosopher of his country, something that also happens here. He states that they are like a training ground to stop feeling ashamed of voting for this type of party and that they create a perverse effect, as if the ghost of the virtual result, he says, ended up becoming reality. In this sense, polls would be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Neither ideas, nor project, nor future. This is the diagnosis made by the opinion group Ripoll Futur!, which was created four years ago to talk about the challenges of the Ripoll capital and which is now considering presenting a candidacy in the next municipal elections. Its promoters were Alícia Reina; Eudald Casas, president of ERC in Ripoll; Pere Jordi Piella, former PSC mayor from 1979 to 1993, and the journalist Jordi Altesa, but now they already total about twenty people eager to collaborate. "We are now enough to consider making the leap to institutional politics, although there is fear because Aliança is a steamroller," says Altesa, who acts as spokesperson for this civic movement that brings together people of a progressive nature. The polarization experienced in Ripoll, between detractors and supporters of Mayor Sílvia Orriols, is an obstacle to people getting involved, as the precursors admit.

The election results in Saxony-Anhalt have fallen like a bucket of cold water on Germany and Europe as a whole. The continental wave of the far-right, which at one point seemed to be slowing down, has suddenly returned to the heart of Nazi amnesia. And it has received the applause of Trump-Musk-Putin. The AfD is pro-Kremlin and wants support for Ukraine to stop. The worst ghosts of anti-democratic xenophobia hover over the Old Continent.

While traditionalist left-wing and right-wing forces across Europe are "shocked" by the overwhelming victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt, far-right parties are not hiding their joy. Also here at home. Aliança Catalana has shown its happiness for the triumph of the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, in this state of the former East Germany.

After the Catalan independence process and the division of recent years, the recovery and how to move forward in the future have been the most repeated themes. This Tuesday, at the Catalan University of Summer in Prada, a tribute was paid to the former president of Òmnium, Muriel Casals, ten years after her death. The current president of the entity, Xavier Antich, the president of the Parliament, Josep Rull, and the former president of the Parliament and of the ANC, Carme Forcadell, have performed a kind of "beatification" of Casals' figure and have prescribed her as a remedy to "raise the independence movement," regain unity, and combat "the hatred" of the far-right party Aliança Catalana, led by Sílvia Orriols.

The arrival of summer is the arrival of the main festivals and, with them, the same ritual: the mayor goes out onto the balcony at the moment of the proclamation. But increasingly often this ritual also becomes a headache: the moment when organized citizens take advantage of the most media-friendly stage of the municipal calendar to express their discontent with those in power or the politician who shows up. It repeats year after year, and takes different forms depending on who is on the balcony, who is shouting from below, and what is at stake.

Anyone who has children – I have three daughters – knows what it is to love unconditionally. Even a character as unsympathetic to others as Donald Trump demonstrates daily the importance of family. He has not hesitated to favor sons, daughters, sons-in-law, and young people with positions and contracts. In our country, the cases involving part of the Pujol family precipitated the downfall of a true statesman who did not deserve the end he had. Zapatero could not find a better digital marketing expert than his daughters. In the court and capital, José María Aznar, when he could, did: and his daughter's husband became stuffed with lobbying for Endesa or Telefónica. In France, in 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy's son, 23 years old and without finishing his studies, was proposed to preside over EPAD, the public body that manages La Défense, the financial district of Paris. And so on, as many as you wish.Ripoll, which is not Barcelona, nor Madrid, nor Washington nor Paris, has also shown us how far a mother's love (and the discredit of politics!) can go. I can only describe as endearing the performance by Sílvia Orriols adorning herself with a local police t-shirt to explain, before the council, that working as a temporary in Ripoll's security forces had been her daughter's lifelong dream, a dream that was now coming true. A mother cannot destroy such a precise and well-articulated vocational horizon: local police, temporary contract, Ripoll. She cannot do it even if it means not sleeping, drenched in anxiety for the girl's safety, an adolescent on patrol through the urban jungle.

New setback for Sílvia Orriols. The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia (OAC) has opened an investigation into the mayor of Ripoll for alleged irregularities in the hiring of her daughter as a local police officer. The OAC procedure responds to a complaint, which has been admitted for processing and now moves to an investigation phase, in which it will be assessed whether it has merit. Last week, both in the plenary session and the following day in a press conference without questions, Orriols denied having influenced the hiring of her daughter as a local police officer and defended that she obtained "the best grade in a regulated selection process" for an emergency position.

Aliança Catalana started the week with morale through the roof after a survey by El Periódico placed it as the second force in the next elections to the Parliament. However, the Islamophobic party ends the week with a new controversy related to the management in the mayor's office of Ripoll that has put it in the eye of the hurricane: the hiring of Sílvia Orriols' daughter as an interim local police officer. Now the controversy does not revolve around whether her daughter, Guinadell, met the merits for the position, but rather whether the procedure offered sufficient guarantees of impartiality in the face of a possible conflict of interest.

The Ripoll City Council has hired one of the daughters of the town's mayor, Sílvia Orriols, as an interim local police officer. Orriols herself announced this at the plenary session on Tuesday evening and made it clear that she had not placed "anyone in a position" and that she had "absolutely abstained from participating in anything affecting the process," even though she was the one who appointed the tribunal formed by officers of the corps. "Just as I cannot benefit her with my position, I also cannot prevent her from fulfilling her dream," she stated in response to the opposition's reproaches. The position was announced as "urgent" to guarantee the "correct provision of service" given the "structural understaffing of officers," Orriols pointed out.

Let's start with the big headlines that the latest barometer of the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió of the Generalitat, which confirms already known trends in our political landscape. Aliança Catalana positions itself as the third force – in a technical tie with the second, ERC – in the Parliament, thanks to votes that leave Junts per Catalunya, which shows unexpected weakness. Meanwhile, the PSC, despite accumulating a great deal of power, not only does not advance, but recedes. All of this coincides, for example, with the survey published by this newspaper last May, although Sílvia Orriols' rise was not as pronounced then as it is now.Before continuing, it is worth pointing out that polls are only a snapshot, the reflection of a specific moment in a reality – in this case, political reality – that is constantly evolving. Shortly after the photograph was taken, the situation has already changed and is different. In this regard, it should be remembered that we are in July 2026 and the Catalan elections will be held, if they are not brought forward, in the spring of 2028. There is a long time to go. Many things, foreseen and unforeseen, have to happen between now and then. For example, it is very possible that next year we will have a PP-Vox government in Madrid, and we also have to expect that the amnesty will have been fully effective and Carles Puigdemont will have returned to Catalonia. However, polls serve to help us understand and better grasp the situation we are in.The main protagonists today are, without a doubt, Sílvia Orriols and her party. Never before, since the recovery of democracy, has such a rapid and resounding rise been seen. Aliança is receiving support from many people who had voted for Junts. It is also taking voters from Vox. It is very clear that Orriols's main appeal is the call against immigration, especially against Muslim immigration. This fact should serve for everyone to realize that the migratory issue must be addressed, whether one likes it or not. It cannot be allowed to be taken over and capitalized on by either Aliança or Vox. The fact that these two parties have an estimated voting intention of practically 25% indicates that immigration – in the volume that Catalonia has received it – is perceived as a problem by many citizens. It is an important concern. If we do not want the dehumanizing and often impossible recipes of the far-right to continue advancing, the rest of the forces must face the phenomenon head-on, they must foster an honest debate and they must make realistic – autonomies have few competences in this matter – and sensible proposals. Hiding our heads in the sand and pretending that nothing is happening leads us to a disastrous scenario.

The CEO survey confirms the trends that ARA's already pointed to and which draws a double axis of growth on the Catalan political map: one that concentrates opposition to Salvador Illa's executive, and which is currently held by Aliança Catalana, and another that gathers the left-wing vote considered most useful to stop the far-right, which is currently ERC of the Junqueras-Rufián tandem. To summarize, we can say that Aliança is the anti-Illa party and ERC is the anti-Orriols party. And currently, the survey places these two parties vying for second position in hypothetical parliamentary elections.

The PSC would win the parliamentary elections again if they were held today, despite maintaining a downward trend that would take them from the 42 seats obtained in 2024 to a range of between 36 and 38. However, the most relevant image offered by the barometer of the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) made public yesterday is the consolidation of Aliança Catalana on the right of the parliamentary spectrum. Sílvia Orriols' party climbs to 23-25 deputies (it currently has 2) and clearly surpasses Junts per Catalunya, its main rival, which would lose half of its support to a range of between 16 and 18 deputies. ERC is the other party that is rising, consolidating the second position already predicted by other polls, up to 24-26 deputies.

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.

In history, underlying continuities tend to be stronger than explosive ruptures. Even if they are continuities blended by the mixer of geek nostalgia, behind which one doesn't have to stir much to find the defense of unspeakable interests and ultranationalism. Now Donald Trump wants to return to the 19th century: commercial protectionism (multi-purpose tariffs), superpower geopolitics (peace through the threat of war, not diplomatic multilateralism), and shredded democratic institutions (strong, personalistic, autocratic political leaderships). Does the 21st-century Catalan resemble the 19th century as well? Political scientist Jordi Muñoz argued a few days ago for the similarity between territories where Sílvia Orriols' xenophobic Alliance has more demographic traction and the regions where 19th-century Carlism received more electoral support towards the end of the 1800s.

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.

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.

That Gabriel Rufián and Sílvia Orriols are the two most popular politicians in Catalonia reflects quite severely the situation of our politics and, by extension, the state of mind, the spiritual state, if you prefer, of the country. I will not dwell on qualifications regarding their methods or discourse, neither the spokesperson for the Esquerra group in Congress nor the mayor – mayoress, she says – of Ripoll. It is enough to remember that they are two populist and polarizing styles. By this I do not mean, in any way, that they are equal or comparable (Rufián does not use Orriols' Islamophobia), but simply that I do not find them to be examples of good politics, nor commendable figures. It is also significant that neither Rufián nor Orriols are national politicians, even though Orriols has a seat in Parliament. The popularity we spoke of they have achieved outside of national politics, understood as that which has Catalonia as its scope and object. Rufián has been in Madrid for ages. Orriols has his epicenter in the city of Ripoll. Where are the national politicians? Well, all of them below Rufián and Orriols, as indicated by the latest poll published by ARA. The President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, occupies third place. And Carles Puigdemont, ninth (second to last). Oriol Junqueras appears in a not-so-bad fourth position. Furthermore, his party, which wins many votes, seems to be recovering from the dismal last electoral cycle. The problem here is another: Rufián is more popular than Junqueras both among the electorate in general and among Republican voters in particular. An insolent question for the leadership of ERC: in view of this, should the party strive to be more like Rufián or vice versa: should Rufián try to be more like the party? Let's add some other element. The capital change that is taking place in Catalonia is the meteoric rise of Aliança Catalana, Orriols' formation. This can change almost everything. One of the consequences of this growth, regarding the combination of forces, is that it will absolutely prevent a new pro-independence government in Catalonia. Whoever still has this dream should let it go. Forget about it for a long time. If it was already very complicated before, it will now become impossible. Neither the PSC, nor the PP, nor Vox will have achieved it. The voters of a party that, what a paradox, calls itself and wants to be more Catalan and more pro-independence than anyone else will have achieved it: Aliança Catalana. As can be seen, the general landscape drawn by the ARA poll – which agrees with other previous opinion studies – is between strange and bleak. And no, it is no consolation that in other places, near or far, they are worse off than us.