The president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the majority of the benches in the Parliament agreed this Friday in reproaching the mayor of Ripoll (Girona) Sílvia Orriols for hiring her daughter as an interim in the Local Police of the municipality. All agreed on focusing their criticism on the realm of public ethics, leaving aside the legal implications of a process that raises several questions. “It is not good to go around giving lessons in life,” said the head of the Government when asked about the issue at the mid-term balance press conference.
Read more Esther Palomera and Gonzalo Miró will be the new hosts of ‘Malas lenguas’ on La 2
On many occasions, Orriols has criticized from her seat in the Parliament the traditional parties and practices such as the handpicking of acquaintances and relatives for positions in the Administrations. The leader of the xenophobic party Aliança Catalana also tried to present herself as an option free from such practices. The mayor, in recent days, has defended that those cases are not comparable to that of her daughter, who did undergo a selection test with guarantees. Despite the right of Orriols’ eldest daughter to apply for that position, there is a clear conflict of interest that she still denies.
“I will only say one thing. It is not good to go around giving lessons in life,” Illa said. He recalled at the press conference that, due to the type of processing of the interim position, the Generalitat had no participation in that process, but that will happen in the opposition process for a permanent position in the same body, for which Guinadell Orriols also applied and is a finalist. From the words of the head of the Government, it is deduced that, although the Generalitat has powers over the regulation of local police, no type of challenge or appeal is on the table at this stage.
Junts per Catalunya, the only party that asked for explanations in the municipal plenary where Ripoll announced the appointment of her daughter, already received a refusal from the mayor when proposing that she cede security powers to another councilor in favor of transparency. The spokesperson for Esquerra Republicana in the Chamber, Ester Capella, also raised the conflict of interest that will imply Orriols being the highest hierarchical superior of her daughter, although she recalled that the position was the result of an emergency hiring and not by opposition. “If everything has been done correctly, well, it doesn’t look good,” she added, denouncing that Orriols “sees the speck in someone else’s eye and not the beam in her own.”
The leader of the Comuns, Jéssica Albiach, is not surprised by the scandal. “The far right is fascist and opportunistic. Opportunistic to place their people [accusing the mayor of nepotism] and to pass off hairdressing expenses [as Vox did in the Parliament],” she attacked. In a similar vein, the anti-capitalist deputy Pilar Castillejos expressed that the episode is an example that the far right “says one thing and does another.” “They say they work for the country and do not attend the Parliament commissions. They talk about transparency and allegedly hire in a transparent way. The fiasco of Aliança is being uncovered,” she added.
Read more Two more days of intense heat, but on Sunday the thermometers will ease and the heatwave will end
