Ripoll faces 28-M with many unknowns before the departure of Jordi Munell (Junts) after 12 years as mayor and 32 in local politics. It will be necessary to see if his successor and councilor, Manoli Vega, maintains his support or if, on the contrary, the councilors and now heads of the list Chantal Pérez (ERC) and Enric Pérez (PSC) achieve the long-awaited change of cycle.
Both formations were less than a hundred votes apart and a long way from Junts. If large majorities are not achieved, they could have to govern together or need other partners, such as Alternativa por Ripoll-CUP with Dani Vilaseca or Joaquim Colomer, expelled from the government and now head of the list of an independent group.
Among the government actions of Junts during this mandate, marked by the pandemic, measures to revitalize the old neighborhood stand out, such as aid to rehabilitate homes and a bag of empty premises. Together with the Ripollès Social Welfare Consortium, the new coexistence plan has materialized, a transversal project to heal the wounds of the 17A attacks by the radicalized young people of Ripoll that left the region in shock.
In these four years, Munell's team has completed the controversial change of the Francoist name of the Fuensanta neighborhood to Calle Ferroviaris after a neighborhood vote. And he has seen how the future Bike Park, which also encountered opposition from environmentalists and Alternativa por Ripoll-CUP, was stopped due to internal disagreements between the promoters.
During this mandate, other works have been prepared, such as the improvements to make the Pont de Calatrava accessible and the second phase of works in the municipal swimming pool to make it an uncovered part. And great challenges remain on the table such as reinforcing health care in the region due to the lack of professionals, improving mobility with the future Ripoll northern variant, the splitting of the R3 and the lack of social housing.
The expulsion of deputy mayor Joaquim Colomer a few months ago due to lack of trust and accusations of disloyalty on social networks from false accounts clouded an end to his mandate. The current president of the County Council, now in opposition, has become a new political actor under the new brand of Som-hi Ripoll-Independents pel Ripollès. These elections will serve to quantify the voters that it is capable of mobilizing without the Junts umbrella.
A year ago, Junts officially presented its replacement, the businesswoman Manoli Vega, unanimously elected and with a clear will to continue with government action. In 1999 she entered the opposition with the CiU as a councilor and later she was in charge of the Unió de Botiguers de Ripoll. This legislature she has assumed the third deputy mayor and council of Tourism, Commerce and Business.
ERC debuts head of the list, Chantal Pérez, councilor in the opposition. A lawyer by profession and currently secretary of a justice of the peace, she faces the elections with the challenge of reversing the bleeding of councilors that the training has experienced in recent years, going from 5 in 2011, 4 in 2015 and up to the current 3 . ERC has never won in the capital of Ripollès although it governed with Teresa Jordà as mayoress from 2003 to 2011 with the PSC and ICV and later only with the Socialists. The current advisor for Climate Action closes the list.
The PSC experienced a revulsive vote in 2019, going from 1 to 3 with Anna-Belén Avilés as head of the list, who steps aside and becomes number 2. The party once again bets on Enric Pérez, a worker at the MAP Foundation and until now also a councilor. He was already head of the PSC list in 2007 and 2011. In this period, in addition, he was also president of the Regional Council.
Alternative for Ripoll-CUP also renews the head of the list and does so with the journalist, social anthropologist and high school teacher Dani Vilaseca. The formation has gone from one councilor in 2015 to 2 in 2019 and they have set themselves the goal of having the key to a left-wing government.
The far-right councilor Sílvia Orriols was elected in 2019 as the head of the Front Nacional de Catalunya (FNC) list. At the beginning of 2020, she broke with the party and became a councilor not attached to the opposition. She works as an administrator and now appears as the head of the Aliança Catalana list that she has founded. During the past campaign, the parties represented and proposed by the CUP agreed to create a cordon sanitaire in the FNC due to its "xenophobic ideology." The city was shocked by the attacks and it was feared that this would fuel hate speech. During her tenure, she did not win support with the rest of the parties and kept up the speeches on immigration.
