---
title: "From Ripoll, a far-right Catalan party turns fear of Islam into votes"
description: "Catalan Alliance, led by Ripoll’s mayor Sílvia Orriols, now polls second in Catalonia, and Muslims in her town say they are afraid"
author: "Jan Sokol"
published: 2026-10-21T15:36:42Z
modified: 2026-10-22T01:31:59Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/from-ripoll-a-far-right-catalan-party-turns-fear-of-islam-in-8fc6b3
language: en
tags: ["politics", "immigration", "far-right", "spain", "catalonia", "europe"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# From Ripoll, a far-right Catalan party turns fear of Islam into votes

*Catalan Alliance, led by Ripoll’s mayor Sílvia Orriols, now polls second in Catalonia, and Muslims in her town say they are afraid*

By Jan Sokol · October 21, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/from-ripoll-a-far-right-catalan-party-turns-fear-of-islam-in-8fc6b3

## In brief

- Catalan Alliance, led by Ripoll mayor Sílvia Orriols, wants a migration crackdown and calls Islam a threat to society
- A Sigma Dos poll for El Mundo gave it 25–28 seats and 16.7%, second only to the Socialists at 23.3%
- The party is drawing voters from Junts and ERC, the parties that led the failed 2017 independence bid
- Spain holds a snap election in November, with polls showing the People’s Party and Vox gaining
- Spain has 2.4 million Muslims, the largest community in Catalonia, and some there say they are scared

Ripoll is a small town in Catalonia, not far from the French frontier. In 2017 a cell formed there planned the attack on Barcelona that killed 16 people and that ISIL claimed. Most towns would rather be remembered for something else. Ripoll has found a second fame, and it grew out of the first.

The town’s mayor is Sílvia Orriols. After the attack she turned sharply against Muslims. She now leads Aliança Catalana, Catalan Alliance, a party that wants Catalonia to be independent, wants a crackdown on migration and calls Islam a threat to society. In the regional election of 2024 it won [3.8% of the vote and two seats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Catalan_regional_election), the smallest group in the chamber. The polls now say it could become the second force in Catalonia.

Almost ten years after the failed independence bid, [Graham Keeley writes for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/21/catalonias-new-far-right-how-anti-muslim-sentiment-is-reshaping-politics) from Barcelona that hostility to migrants and to Muslims has taken secession’s place as the force driving voters in this wealthy region. Catalonia produces a fifth of Spain’s economy. It is also home to the largest Muslim population in the country.

## The arithmetic

A Sigma Dos poll for *El Mundo*, published on 11 September, which is Catalonia’s national day, gave the party between 25 and 28 seats and 16.7% of the vote. The Socialists would still come first, with 23.3% and 19 to 22 seats, but would lose ground: 10 seats by Al Jazeera’s count, [eleven according to Libertad Digital’s](https://www.libertaddigital.com/cataluna/2026-09-11/orriols-revienta-otra-encuesta-alianca-catalana-asciende-al-segundo-puesto-e-illa-cae-once-escanos-7458375/) account of the same survey. Every other secessionist party would shrink.

![Five ballot boxes increase in height from left to right, ending with a tall yellow box with red stripes and a blank ballot entering its slot.](https://rews.cc/img/5e1e5d2e9c695184d5855cfe243e2488c73b90c1.webp)

The Catalan government’s own polling centre, the CEO, found earlier that Catalan Alliance had [already overtaken Junts and was approaching ERC](https://en.ara.cat/politics/alianca-catalana-already-surpasses-junts-according-to-the-ceo_1_5793559.html). That survey, carried out by GESOP, interviewed 2,000 adults door to door between 21 May and 25 June. So the region’s government paid to measure the advance of the party that wants to replace it. The next regional election is due in 2028.

The voters are coming from the old houses of independence: Together for Catalonia and Catalan Republican Left, the two parties that led the breakaway of 2017. A movement that once promised a new state has left behind a mood that is looking for a new enemy.

## A businessman in Molins de Rei

Eduard Lopez runs a business in Molins de Rei, a town near Barcelona. “All my friends support Catalan Alliance,” he told Al Jazeera. In his view there are too many migrants and Islam is a threat. The other independence parties, he said, are outdated and did not keep their promises.

That last complaint carries the whole story. People were told a separate country would come. It did not come. The disappointment stayed, and someone has found a new use for it.

![Two roofless brick houses, one yellow and one red, connect via winding trails of loose bricks to a tall wall built from both colors.](https://rews.cc/img/a5b6434c5c14fcdfb9739bd44e758075ac3b2df2.webp)

## The mayor’s inventory

Orriols does not talk like someone counting on hope. “If there is no substantial change, the prospects for Catalonia are bleak,” she said. She listed what she sees as Catalonia’s illnesses: less use of the Catalan language, crime, abuse of public services, “mass and invasive immigration,” more people calling for Islamic law, and what she called Spanish “fiscal plundering.” Her party, she said, speaks for “those who have not surrendered to globalisation and barbarism.”

On 10 September, the eve of the national day, police escorted her through the Fossar de les Moreres in Barcelona’s El Born district, where Catalan separatists were protesting and threw objects at her. The separatists of yesterday were throwing things at the separatist of today. Movements often turn on their own children this way.

## Madrid, November

None of this stays inside Catalonia. Spain holds a snap election in November, and polls show the People’s Party and Vox [gaining ground](https://rews.cc/a/sanchez-called-an-election-about-housing-polls-suggest-vox-i-aba294). Al Jazeera notes that the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy may be turning right, as Germany, Italy and France have seen far-right victories. According to the national statistics institute, INE, a fifth of Spain’s nearly 50 million people were born abroad, most of them in Colombia, Venezuela and Morocco. The Union of Islamic Federations of Spain counts 2.4 million Muslims in the country, and the largest community lives in Catalonia.

![A red arrow points right from the center of a gold pie chart, with small human figures standing on one teal segment.](https://rews.cc/img/da2f248b74565e01b3502801516c1f894c079e6c.webp)

Juan Ignacio Castien Maestro, who studies Islamic affairs at Complutense University in Madrid, says Islamophobia in Spain is centuries old but has grown in recent years. Muslim migrants, he says, get the blame for problems such as unemployment and housing, the issue on which Pedro Sánchez [chose to fight this election](https://rews.cc/a/sanchez-calls-a-snap-election-betting-housing-is-better-grou-af55c2). “Catalonia is a special case in that some Catalan \[nationalist\] parties were already Islamophobic,” he said.

Jose Pablo Martínez, a migration specialist at the Real Elcano Institute, says Spain’s left-wing government treats migrants more generously than many European governments do. Even so, “certain sections of the population consider migrants to be competing for their jobs and housing.”

Governments write migration policy. The voters who feel they are competing for jobs and homes write their own version, and they write it at the ballot box.

## Back in Ripoll

Soukayna El Abdi is president of the Young Moroccans of Ripoll. “This has surprised all of us,” she said. “The rise of \[Catalan\] Alliance is about unfounded hate.” She traces the racism in her town back to the attack of 2017. She remembers that Orriols’s daughters were once friends with her cousins, until Orriols went into politics and that changed.

Her parents and her two brothers still live in Ripoll, the town where the party was born. “I am very scared,” she said.