Sílvia Orriols goes from surprise to surprise: in 2023 she was mayor and in 2024 she entered the Catalan Chamber. In 2025, polls predict that Aliança Catalana will be able to move from the eighth and last place in the Catalan party system to fourth position, and even manage to rise higher.
We might ask ourselves why, unlike other national-populist parties, Aliança was not born earlier, took some time to enter the Catalan parliament and is still in the queue? However, this issue is outdated, according to CEO data.
Today the question becomes another: could Sílvia Orriols become leader of the opposition in Catalonia in a new government presided over by Salvador Illa? Glossing the rock group Jarabe de Palo, «It depends, what does it depend on? Depending on how you look at it, it all depends.
If we look at global trends, Sílvia Orriols would be on the winners’ podium because these are the times. Radical right populist parties win in a dozen countries: the United States, Italy, Austria, France, Argentina, El Salvador, Switzerland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. They are second in ten other countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Peru, Poland, Estonia and Romania. And they rank third in five other countries: Spain, Israel, Scotland, Cyprus and Croatia. I mentioned twenty-five countries in which new far-right parties took to the parliamentary podium, with gold, silver or bronze medals. It’s not trivial. To skyrocket, the best campaign for Sílvia Orriols is to continue her parliamentary confrontation and transfer the polarization to social networks through this message: fear of insecurity and resentment towards immigrants.
Sílvia Orriols will rise again, as the book explains Save Catalonia. The gestation of Catalan national populism (Portic publishing house). But to paraphrase the singer Pau Donés: “What goes up, comes down.” It also depends on the other parties that Aliança and Vox avoid. They have just a year and a half to organize a strategy that bears fruit before the municipal elections.
AS? The PSC implements public social policies and the Neighborhood Plan with greater commitment. Together with the return of Carles Puigdemont and a new exciting story for his electorate that addresses the political emotions of fear and resentment, typical of Aliança’s agenda. The ERC is not surprised by the fact that it is second in the polls, given that a part of the leaders of Aliança come from Esquerra, and, moreover, like Comunes and CUP, examining how Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York. PP abandons Feijóo’s tactic of competing with Vox, who would get the overtaking. There are two future scenarios: Aliança’s rise to 2nd or 3rd place, or a slowdown to 4th. What will happen?
