“To the Count who founded the Catalan nation in Ripoll,” reads the phrase on a plaque next to the entrance door of the city hall of Ripoll (Girona), a town founded by Wifredo el Veloso starting in 879. Sylvia Orioles It is the new political sensation … In Catalonia. Regional MP since 2024 and mayor of Ripoll since 2023, opinion polls predict that her party, Alianca Catalana, will gain 20 seats in parliament. To compare the scale of this outbreak – which has mesmerized a large part of the country despite its anti-Spanish rhetoric – it is enough to review what opinion polls predict for the rest of the parties: Orioles outperforms the Vox Party and the People’s Party, and is linked to its relations with Carles Puigdemont. He is about to catch up with Oriol Junqueras and no one dares to bet against him remaining close to the Socialist Political Council led by Salvador Illa, which sees, however, and to its advantage, how the independence movement is divided and unable to express an operational majority.
The shock – currently in the form of an earthquake warning – has its center in the cradle of Catalan nationalism where the remains of Count Wifredo el Veloso (second half of the 9th century) rest, whom nationalist historiography has given the title of father of the Catalan nation, the Christian who restored the population of the plain of Vic (province of Barcelona) against the Muslims and the power that won “independence” from the Carolingians.
Nearly 1,150 years later, from this place, a political movement is expanding, led by a 41-year-old woman, “a 27-year-old mother of five who stopped working because I couldn’t afford it,” she says, with unusual names like Guinadell, Queralt, Violant, Fortià and Peronella, with eight Catalan surnames (Orriols, Serra, Riquer, Iborra, Rius, Busquets, Casas Villamala, 16 years old, to her children, are vegetarians, Islamophobes, and radical independents, from the countryside more than the city, and speak only Catalan. They are self-taught and their speech captivates, in form and content, the young people – who are disappointed in their expectation of a life project – and the elderly – who are worried about the inheritance they will leave to their grandchildren. She presents herself against the institutional parties as a woman of the people. He is part of the populist trend running through Europe. It generates many phobias such as philias.
Good casting
The Orioles (Vic, Barcelona, 1984) that intervene in Parliament (seriousness, tone of the historical moment, speech, force, extremism…) are not the same ones that are dealt with at short distances (smiling, fragile, accessible, flat…). Nor is the person who runs the municipal sessions of the Constitutional Council, and whom the opposition – unable to find an alternative to implementing the memorandum of censure – accuses of authoritarian methods and forms. But there is a common denominator in all these positions: they say what they think and believe, and for a part of Catalans this is enough for them to have confidence in their votes.
“People vote for her because she says what they see every day at work, at home, about their problems,” Francesc Xavier Formatger tells ABC. One of the five members of the Alianca Council Who accompanies her to Ripoll City Hall. He adds: “They believe her because she did not let them down.”
This, without disappointing the voter, is one of the keys to the Orioles’ success. This is due more to the fault of the political rival – especially the independence movement – than to its success. This is a common phenomenon among newly emerging parties (remember Podemos and Ciudadanos, and also Vox). This was explained graphically by Guillem Barranqueras, another member of the Alianca Council in Ripoll, who is convinced by this sentence: «Together he died. “Not even if Puigdemont comes back and runs for all the elections.” And according to the latest state poll, 21% of those who voted for Junt a year ago would now do so for the Orioles.
Xavier Torrens, professor of political science at the University of Barcelona and author of the Catalan-language book Save Catalonia. La gestació del nacionalpopulisme català (Pòrtic, 2024) has the explanation: “She believes what she says and says what she believes,” and her message, her theatre, the simplicity with which she dresses, the life of a woman who has fallen on hard times (economic difficulties a few years ago) and her profession (management in a company in the region), give her “an authenticity that is highly appreciated by her current and future voters.”
In this way, although the initiatives it proposes may in some cases go beyond constitutional frameworks, in political matters, and those related to human rights, in matters of immigration, their message can easily penetrate. There is no cost to contradiction. No one reprimands him – or reconciles him – for example, despite defining himself as a “Catalan nationalist” from the cradle, he waves a Spanish flag on the balcony of Ripoll’s town hall, a country he defines as a “colony” and “stealing” Catalonia’s resources, while contemptuously describing the leaders of the Junts and the ERC as “pragmatists” for not implementing independence unilaterally. It is also not worth refuting the data that the city of Ripoll and its district, Ripoll, are the scene of high migration rates. The city, according to data from the Statistics Institute of Catalonia (Idescat), has 15.03% foreigners, the region 11.92%, and Catalonia 18.02%.
Mayor of Ripoll and Regional Deputy
She is 41 years old, has eight Catalan surnames, mother of five, vegetarian, Islamophobic, “independent” from the cradle, and speaks only Catalan.
For this, Carmi Brugarola, former ICV Consultant at RipollThe professor of Catalan language and literature at the city’s Abad Oliba Institute and activist against Alianca believes that Orioles poses a threat to coexistence, as his ideas based on lies are presented in an attractive way. “They generate hatred. “The far right and radical Islam are the same thing,” defends Brugarola, against whom the Orioles opened a disciplinary file with a fine of between 750 and 3,000 euros – because he hung the poster of the mayor of the festival, which the mayor had objected to for displaying a photo of a young woman in a hijab.
Direct criticism of Islam is another major point of growth for the Orioles. Some political scientists point out that Aliansa highlights this aspect, before its separatism and its commitment against everything Spanish, to attract voters who are not nationalists but are critical of the immigration management carried out so far. Above all, those associated with Islam or of Maghreb origin, for the most part.
“The attacks of August 17, 2017 were the reason we started meeting and decided to get into politics,” Orioles admitted to this newspaper, serving from his office in the town hall decorated with a 1-O urn and only about 150 meters in a straight line from the grave of Wifredo el Veloso in the Santa María de Ripoll Monastery. The jihadist cell that carried out the attack in Barcelona and Cambrils has its origins in Ripoll, and a few days ago some of its young members had been playing with Orioles children.
Islamophobia
There are two mosques in Ripoll. Imam Abdul Baqi SattiWho is considered the leader of the terrorist group, and was the imam of the Islamic Community Mosque Anwar del Repoles in 2016 and 2017. Adil – that’s his name, he claims – leaves the temple and, when asked by Orioles, expresses his regret that he is “attacking” Muslims just because he is a Muslim. “I feel sorry for racist people. It creates hatred. “But there is no tension among the townspeople,” he says. Adel cannot vote.
A poster in which Catalan politics is described as “racist” and “fascist” among other qualifications.
Therefore, the Ripoll is the perfect cocktail shaker for the worst moment of the party. The components are not just religious – or rather, terrorist – there is also some failed independence, and a lot of nationalism spread over decades, and, as appropriate, the leadership of a simple woman capable of defending populist measures similar to those embraced by the current European far right. A kind of “Beaujolais” without diplomacy.
The Orioles wake up early every day from Monday to Saturday, On Sundays he takes care of his seriously ill father, along with his mother and sister Irina (twelve years older than Sylvia), a veterinarian and Junts counselor in a small town in the region (population 220). “They offered it to him and he accepted. “But in politics, we believe the same thing,” says Mayor Orioles, who insists. “We discuss very little political matters.”
Sylvia comes from a family of farmers, and was active among the youth of the Egyptian Red Crescent. He tried to revive Estat Català, and ended up putting his foot in the city council in 2019, under the name of the National Front of Catalonia – a residual far-right party – which gathered votes that went to Platform for All Catalonia – a populist, anti-immigration party that had some success at the local level – in the previous elections. It needed only 503 votes (Ripoll has a population of 11,000). Four years later, already with Alianza, he obtained 1401 and assumed the position of mayor. In the 2024 regional elections, 1,559 convinced Riboli.
At her inauguration ceremony as mayor (2023) she appeared with her grandfather in her hands. Jordi Munil (Junts) refused to give him the stick and left the stick on the table. There the Countess of Ripoll was born.