Sílvia Orriols Serra (; born 9 October 1984) is a Catalan politician, president of the

far-right Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...

political party Catalan Alliance. Orriols was elected

mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a Municipal corporation, municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilitie ...

of Ripoll in June 2023 and elected deputy to the

Parliament of Catalonia The Parliament of Catalonia (, ; ; ) is the Unicameralism, unicameral legislature of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Catalonia. The Parliament is currently made up of 135 members, known as Deputy (legislator), deput ...

a year later. She carries out the three roles concurrently.

Biography

Orriols has a degree in

Library and Information Science Library and information science (LIS)Library and Information Sciences is the name used in the Dewey Decimal Classification for class 20 from the 18th edition (1971) to the 22nd edition (2003). are two interconnected disciplines that deal with inf ...

from the University of Vic and has worked since 2006 as a secretary in a

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. As a politician, she has been active in several political parties. In 2004 she joined the Estat Català lists for the

elections to the European Parliament Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's. Until 2019, 751 ...

. After the independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017, she was part of the Ripoll protests against the application of article 155, which elevated her profile. Subsequently, she joined the National Front of Catalonia, a party with which she ran in the 2019 local elections in Ripoll and obtained 503 votes and won one

councilor A councillor, alternatively councilman, councilwoman, councilperson, or council member, is someone who sits on, votes in, or is a member of, a council. This is typically an elected representative of an electoral district in a municipal or regio ...

seat. The other parties in the council agreed on a cordon sanitaire, with the commitment not to agree or participate in electoral debates with her. In March 2020, she left the party and continued in the town council as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

councilor. In July of that same year she founded a new political party, the Catalan Alliance party, with which she defends the independence of Catalonia and anti-Islam positions; The party considers that

immigration Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...

is actually an invasion, an idea that is linked to the conspiracy theory of the great replacement. Orriols ran for mayor of Ripoll in the 2023 local elections. The Catalan Alliance was the most voted party in the municipality, with 6 councilors and more than 30% of the votes. Faced with the possibility of her becoming

, most of the remaining political forces tried to implement a cordon sanitaire to prevent Orriols from becoming the mayor of Ripoll. However, these efforts were unsuccessful because Junts per Catalunya distanced itself from them, thus allowing Orriols to become the municipality's mayor. She successfully ran in the 2024 Parliament of Catalonia election for

Girona Girona (; ) is the capital city of the Province of Girona in the autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the Ter, Onyar, Galligants, and Güell rivers. The city had an official population of 106,476 in 2024, but the p ...

, getting one seat, while managing to obtain another one for

Lleida Lleida (, ; ; '' see below'') is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital and largest town in Segrià county, the Ponent region and the province of Lleida. Geographically, it is located in the Catalan Central Depression. It ...

for her Catalan Alliance party.

References

{{Reflist 1984 births Living people