The two PSC councilors in Ripoll have placed their position at the party's disposal after assuming as an error their abstention in the plenary session that approved the municipal budgets for 2026. The decision has occurred after a meeting held this Friday with the socialist leadership in Girona.
The plenary session on April 9 ended with 7 votes in favor and 7 against, so the accounts went ahead thanks to the mayor's casting vote, Sílvia Orriols. The approved budget amounts to 14.1 million euros.
Rectification of the socialist group of Ripoll
The socialist municipal group has disseminated this midday a statement in which it admits that its position contradicts the general framework of the PSC's political action. In that same text it maintains that the decision to abstain was taken exclusively at the local level.
The councilors had initially justified that abstention with the will to avoid a new political and media conflict in Ripoll. However, the group itself now concludes that it did not sufficiently value that the criterion of avoiding any collaboration with the far right should be placed above that initial intention.
Unease in the PSC of Girona
The Federation of the Girona regions of the PSC had already publicly distanced itself from the abstention and immediately summoned the two councilors to ask for explanations. After that meeting with the party leadership in Girona, both have placed their position at the disposal of the organization.
The vote had a relevant political scope in Ripoll. The abstention of the PSC, added to the favorable vote of the independent councilor Joaquim Colomer, allowed to pass for the first time budgets with support from the opposition.
A government in minority
Sílvia Orriols governs the Ripoll City Council with 6 of the 17 councilors of the plenary. The 2026 accounts passed without any favorable vote from the PSC, although with an abstention that the group itself has publicly rectified afterwards and that has opened an internal crisis in the socialist formation in the municipality.