Ripoll, Spain: mayor's daughter fast-tracked into local police job

Orriols's daughter joins the Ripoll local police through the fast track

She is 19, fresh out of high school, and already part of the Ripoll local police force in Spain. The position was advertised on an urgent basis, four candidates applied, and she came first. Her mother, mayor Sílvia Orriols, was blunt in the face of criticism: "I will not allow her to be accused of being a nepotism hire."

A very convenient urgency for a €1,700 salary

The Ripoll town council maintains that the process was clean and that Orriols's daughter won it with the highest score. It is an interim post, though. A detail that does not go unnoticed: the position was filled through the fast track, with only four applicants, in a small town. The salary, according to the information discussed, is around €1,700 a month. You can argue whether that is a lot or a little, but it is not your typical "first taste of the job market" figure.

Meanwhile, the absence of an official photo of the new officer has fuelled speculation. No one has managed to see the face of the person who, from now on, can hand out fines in one of the best-known towns in the Ripollès region.

The problem with interim police officers in Catalonia

Here comes the technical part. The Spanish Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the figure of the interim local police officer should not exist: municipal officers must be career civil servants. Catalonia, however, seems to have its own interpretation. This is no minor debate: if the post is interim, the appointment can be reversed at any time, for example when the mayor's office changes hands. And Orriols governs in a minority.

It is the perfect combination of suspicion: an urgent recruitment process, a low number of candidates, a direct family relationship with the town's highest authority and a legally contested position. Each piece on its own has an explanation. Together, they invite the awkward question.

From "they're all corrupt" to the Vox exception

The case has peine the door to the usual slogan: "it's all rotten, not one of them is clean." Some point out that corruption knows no party labels: left, right, separatists or centralists. Others note that only days earlier, the fines imposed on Vox by the Spanish Court of Accounts were overturned, which Orriols's defenders use as an example of how a media conviction can evaporate afterwards.

The positions are the usual ones: those who see a blatant case of nepotism in the mayor's house, those who consider it plausible in a small town that the daughter got the best score, and those who simply observe that, in this, politicians are no different from one another.

The most striking figure at the end is this: the post was urgent and only four people applied. Under normal circumstances, an urgent recruitment drive for a police position in a town of 10,000 inhabitants attracts dozens of applicants. Here there were four. One of them, the mayor's daughter. And she won. Everyone can decide for themselves whether that is merit or a miracle.