The people of Ripoll are fed up with a political correctness that has left the municipality devastated and are grateful that someone has had the courage to say in the City Hall what everyone thinks in the dining room at home", says Sílvia Orriols, head of the Aliança Catalana list. , which with a clear anti-immigration discourse became Ripoll's most voted force against all odds last Sunday, ousting Junts, who has governed for the last 12 years, with Jordi Munell at the helm.
Abstention aside, Junts, which presented Manoli Vega as a candidate, has lost five councilors in these elections, the same figure that Aliança has won, which in the previous term, with the very recent attacks in Barcelona, presented itself with the acronym of National Front of Catalonia (FNC), obtaining a councilor. The xenophobic party forced Orriols to lower the tone in her criticism of immigration, which is why she disassociated herself from these acronyms and ended up co-founding Aliança, which in these elections presented itself with the apocalyptic slogan "Salvem Ripoll". The results now give him the advantage to govern, but some neighbors plead with the other forces to avoid him. For the sake, they say, of "coexistence." “I would never have imagined that racism here; I hope they get together to prevent her from being mayor, ”says Núria, a woman who does not want to give her last name. Most of those who speak out camouflage their identity. "People in Ripoll are tolerant, she is not xenophobic, but she has been brave to say what she thinks and many people have bought her speech," says another woman who prefers to remain anonymous.
Ripoll is not a tense society like the one left by the 17-A attacks committed by radicalized young people from the municipality. “Now that we were back to having a good coexistence after that, if he becomes mayor the atmosphere will be rarer,” says Saber Oukabir, a relative of two of the terrorists who attacked on the Rambla, now married to a Catalan woman and father of a child. The electoral results have once again placed the focus on this municipality of some 11,000 inhabitants and a low immigration ratio of 13%, compared to others in the province. Aliança Catalana, a Catalan independence party with Islamophobic proclamations, obtained 30% of the votes, a figure that has earned them six councillors, twice as many as Junts or ERC.
With these data, it is not difficult to find neighbors walking through Ripoll who verbalize the slogans that Orriols has repeated in the campaign, in the plenary hall or on social networks, which he uses regularly to convey his messages, mainly against the Maghreb collective. "The people have woken up and the town is fed up," says a 59-year-old neighbor. When asked what he is fed up with, he says: “Immigrants have all kinds of help and those from here, who go through bad times, do not receive anything; people see it but they don't say anything out of fear but they have already spoken at the polls... and the attacks have had nothing to do with it”, he affirms. Juanita and María, two elderly sisters, pronounce themselves along a similar line. "In life there must be a balance, some cannot be a lot and others nothing... And it is not racism, but justice," insists one of them. The generalization unworthy to the foreign community. “I have been here for 17 years and I have never asked for anything, everything I have I pay with my salary,” says a woman from the Dominican Republic.
Having seen what is seen, the still mayor Jordi Munell makes self-criticism. "Your fake news has helped to generate rumors that have created misgivings, perhaps we should have stopped them earlier, we made the mistake of not giving too much importance to your fallacies, thinking that they would fall under their own weight, but this has not been the case." Wafa Marsi, who was a mediator when the terrorist attacks in Barcelona took place, believes that it is time for administrations and political parties to deny their proclamations to prevent "the ball from continuing to get bigger."
