Catalan politics are now, it seems, a far cry from 2017’s infamous, unauthorised independence referendum. It was violently repressed by national police forces, led to widespread rioting, triggered a constitutional crisis in Spain, and saw leaders like Carles Puigdemont flee the country.

The 2024 regional elections were a stark contrast. For over a decade, Catalonia had been governed by pro-independence parties – either Puigdemont’s right-wing Junts or the left-wing ERC – but it was the PSC (the Catalan wing of Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party) who emerged as the largest force. They were able to form a minority government with the support of ERC and the left-wing Comuns.

The procés, as the push for Catalan independence came to be known, had seemingly come to an end.

But amid this larger shift, a new party, Aliança Catalana (Catalan Alliance, AC), entered the Catalan Parliament for the first time. Despite winning only two of the region’s 135 seats in 2024, this new force is now exerting huge influence over Catalonia’s – and by extension Spain’s – political landscape.

Aliança Catalana is a far-right, pro-independence and explicitly anti-immigration party. It is led by Sílvia Orriols, the mayor of Ripoll, a town of just over 10,000 inhabitants.

With just 1.5% of parliamentary representation, AC might look marginal, but it is not. Its emergence signals a reconfiguration of Catalan politics after the procés, and it is transforming the nationalist right, a political space traditionally dominated by Junts.

For years, Catalan parliamentary politics was effectively a single-issue affair. Independence eclipsed almost everything else, including the disctinction between left and right, which meant parties like Junts and ERC competed mainly for leadership within the same pro-independence bloc.

As the procés lost momentum – with neither unilateral independence or a negotiated referendum to show for it – new issues have entered........

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