70,000以上의 migrants recently overwhelmed the beachfront border separating Morocco from the Spanish outpost of Ceuta. Sílvia Orriols, Ripoll의 시장과 바르셀로나 카탈로니아 지역 의회 멤버, 당황하지 않았습니다 — 그녀는 익숙한 지형에 있었습니다. 북아프리카 이민에 대한坚决反對によって, 그는 자신의 작은 카탈레나 동맹을 유럽에서 가장 빠르게 성장하는 정당 중 하나로 만들었습니다, 스페인 정치에 더 큰 규모로 교란할 잠재력이 있습니다.

Ms. Orriols criticized the lack of an effective police presence in Ceuta and mocked the Spanish state’s priorities. She reminded her followers on X that in 2017, Catalonia’s independence referendum led to a far more severe crackdown by the national police. “They beat Catalans with truncheons and fired rubber bullets at us for voting in a referendum,” she wrote. “Have you seen any truncheons or rubber bullets in Ceuta? It is urgent that we break with this state that allows repeated violations of its borders.”

In the stridency of her anti-immigration position, Ms. Orriols, 41, can sound like the staunchest right-wing nationalist. She wants a moratorium on immigration and has called for deporting all immigrants who have broken the law in Catalonia. She has campaigned to remove halal menus from public schools and argued that Islam is incompatible with Western values. But apart from her attitude toward migration, her views are not particularly conservative. She supports women’s rights and gay rights, and wears a cross but speaks more about Catalonia’s Christian roots than Christianity itself.

For most of the past century, the tradition Ms. Orriols represents — Catalan nationalism — has been left-leaning, opposed to authoritarianism and associated with a cosmopolitan elite in Barcelona. Catalonia was a last redoubt of the second Spanish Republic against the military uprising of Gen. Francisco Franco, which triumphed with the backing of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the late 1930s. But in her unwavering opposition to immigration, Ms. Orriols is fashioning a version of Catalan nationalism that is more populist, more rural and more confrontational, shifting the question from political power to ethnic survival.