Junts's Circle Criticizes the Pact With Psc to Oust Sílvia Orriols

ERC and Junts face the final stretch of negotiations for the motion of no confidence in Ripoll this Tuesday. The two main opposition parties will hold a final meeting with PSC and CUP to finalize the last details. The operation will remove Sílvia Orriols from the mayor's office and establish a new government formed by the parties of the sanitary cordon.

The parties are negotiating the details of the investiture agreement but also with a long-term perspective. They seek a formula that provides stability to municipal politics in the medium and long term. The motion of no confidence in Ripoll will also have its echo in regional politics.

The big question now is what political cost ERC and Junts will incur for having taken the mayor's office from Aliança Catalana to make a pact with PSC. For now, internal cracks are already beginning to appear in the pro-independence parties. The pro-independence wing of Junts, for instance, openly questions the maneuver.

Germà Bel Expresses His Skepticism

The news that PSC has agreed to join the new government in Ripoll has been poorly received in broad sectors of the pro-independence parties. They consider it unacceptable to make a pact with 155 to take the mayor's office from an independence formation.

Former deputy Germà Bel, from the Junts circle, has warned that the operation will go wrong and recalled what happened in Badalona. There, the sanitary cordon against Xavier García Albiol only served to strengthen him and he obtained an absolute majority.

The comments on his post on X show that he is not alone in this opinion. Many think that "ERC and Junts have finally taken off the mask" and that "in the next elections someone will get many votes." Some believe that the motion of no confidence in Ripoll could mark a turning point in the decline of the pro-independence parties and the rise of Aliança Catalana.

Pilar Rahola has also been very blunt about it.

The friend of Junts and Carles Puigdemont echoed Orriols's own words when she spoke of a "coup in Ripoll." For Rahola, it is "an unnatural coup" that will only strengthen the leader of Aliança Catalana.

Independence Movement, Divided

The official sectors of ERC and Junts fully support the motion of no confidence in Ripoll. They see it as an act of responsibility to stop the far right but also as an opportunity to clip Aliança Catalana's wings.

But the bases of these parties and the independence movement in general are divided. Another pro-independence leader who has opposed the sanitary cordon in Ripoll is Josep Costa. The former vice president of Parlament, former Junts deputy, and ANC leader has called it "nonsense" to replace Orriols "with a tripartite with PSC."

"The sanitary cordon should also have been applied to PSOE," he exclaimed.

Costa's opinion holds special value because on several occasions he has shown his ideological distance from Sílvia Orriols. This indicates that within the independence movement, even people at the opposite end of Aliança Catalana consider the motion of no confidence an aberration.