Chapter 4 : The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) 1927

4: The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) 1927

On 27 July 1927, at the height of the summer fiesta, 20 delegates or so from local, regionally federated and exiled Spanish and Portuguese groups met in the house of Aurora López in Patraix, in the suburbs of Valencia.

This assembly was the founding conference of what was to become the most misrepresented anarchist organization in history — the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, better known by its initials FAI, the Iberian Anarchist Federation.

The Valencia Conference was to last two days. To ensure security it was held in two separate locations. The second session took place under cover of a picnic in a pine forest bordering a beach to the south of the city in the area known as the Grao de Valencia. [27]

Progreso Fernández, a Valencian anarchist who until recently had been living in France, was one of the organizers of the founding conference:

‘Early in 1927 I came down to Valencia to make contacts throughout the region; this I agreed to do, on condition that I was found employment… I began by going to Burriana, Puerto de Sagunto, Liria, Játiva, Sueca, Villena, Elda, Alicante, Murcia… I met with people who had been in the CNT and who sympathized with anarchism.’ [28]

‘Since there were anarchists in Portugal as well, it was decided to give (the new body) an all-embracing nature, hence the name. Invitations were issued to the Portuguese CGT and to the CNT, but only the Levante and Catalan Regionals of the latter showed up.’

For some time most of the organized groups throughout the peninsula had been pressing for a peninsular organization that would establish closer links between the regional and exiled Spanish and Portuguese groups. The Portuguese Anarchist Union (UAP), founded in Alanquer in 1923, had played a prominent role in laying the groundwork for the FAI. In May 1926 the organ of the Portuguese Anarchist Union, O Anarquista, had published a proposed agenda for an anarchist congress to be held on 1 July in Marseilles. Among the items listed was the heading ‘Federación Anarquista Ibérica’. [29]

Two months later, in July 1926, the Federation of Spanish Speaking Anarchist Groups, formed in Lyon the previous year, convened what proved to be a major anarchist conference in Marseilles. The Spanish speaking groups alone sent 30 delegates from all corners of the peninsula and exile. Among the main topics on the agenda were the problems of international anarchism and those peculiar to anarchist groups in exile.

A topic high on the agenda was the position of the Spanish anarchist movement in relation to the CNT. There is considerable confusion as to what actually was agreed on this question; some believe an agreement was reached to intervene directly in the CNT, a decision which others are adamant was not taken.

What is certain is that the delegates agreed that an Iberian Anarchist Federation should be formed without delay and proposed a Liaison Committee for this purpose should be set up in Lisbon. The Committee was commissioned with the task of convening an Iberian Congress to give ‘definite shape’ to the proposed federation.

Perhaps the biggest argument at the Marseilles Congress revolved around the question of hastening the downfall of the Primo de Rivera regime. Two main tendencies emerged to clash violently. One side, led by García Oliver, supported close collaboration with all other groups — political parties and dissident army officers — willing to oppose the dictatorship irrespective of their political beliefs. (Oliver and the National Revolutionary Committee – an ad hoc body cobbled together from among anarchist groups and CNT members that worked with political and/or nationalist groups to topple Primo de Rivera — were working closely at this time with Francesc Macià’s Catalan Esquerra party.) The other group, led by Manuel Pérez, opposed collaboration on the grounds that it was contrary to the anarchist ideal. Although the latter group carried the day at the Marseilles Congress it made little difference to the degree of collaboration between the anarchists, the CNT and the anti-dictatorship parties that continued until the advent of the Republic in 1931.

In Lisbon on 3 January 1927, a UAP congress had urged that the agreements of the Marseilles Congress to establish the FAI be implemented as soon as possible. For the Portuguese, the revolutionary nature of the proposed organization was never in doubt. Item 3 on the agenda spelled out one of the FAI’s chief tasks as: ‘the Spanish revolution and the aid which the Portuguese, as well as others, will be able to give to it.’ [30]

The speed with which the peninsular organization was set up indicates it was now obviously a matter of some priority for the anarchist militants. This may have been due to the decision by the dictatorship in November 1926 to set up arbitration committees in the hope of establishing a ‘harmonious’ corporate society. The function of the comités paritarios was to negotiate wages and working conditions and when Primo de Rivera’s minister of labor invited the socialist UGT to collaborate in the scheme they had jumped at the opportunity ‘on the grounds that there were immediate material benefits to be obtained’. [31]

In the following January, 22 well-known Catalan CNT leaders, led by Angel Pestaña, issued a statement in the paper Vida Sindical calling for the legalization in order to compete with the UGT. Other members of the now reorganized and parallel-structured CNT, the union-dominated CNT National Committee in Mataro and the anarchist-dominated National Revolutionary Committee, firmly opposed the proposals, giving rise to further serious dissension within unionist ranks and widening the split between unionists and anarchists.

Within two months of the UAP’s Lisbon meeting and Pestaña’s call for legalization, the Regional Plenum of the Federation of Anarchist Groups in Catalonia on 20 March 1927 drew up the agenda for the first conference of the FAI. Valencia in June had been chosen as the date and place for the venue. The large number of tourists in June and July would provide perfect cover for the proposed clandestine gathering. A provisional National Secretariat was set up to organize the founding conference and circularize all interested groups. The Anarchist Liaison Committee of Catalonia issued a public manifesto. It was the closest thing to a statement of the aims and principles of the proposed FAI:

‘The Federation of Anarchist Groups of Spain — To Everyone:

‘Who are we? We are the eternal anarchists. Those eternal foes of bourgeois or capitalist ‘order’, now and always. The enemies of property, wage slavery, laws, religions, militarism, the stupidity of men and the iniquity of society.

‘We are the ones who pop up, always unconfounded in the wake of any event, however serious and momentous.

‘An effort has been made to implicate us in the vilest offenses, the most repugnant of crimes. Even so, we will not deny that some wretches have styled themselves anarchists even in the throes of their execrable felonies. Nonetheless, the anarchist has no truck either with theft or with systematic murder.

‘While violence is accepted as a revolutionary necessary and tyrannicide justified when spontaneous, as is exceptional, occasional expropriation whenever the individual has exhausted all of the lawful means of existence and finds himself confronted by the ineluctable necessity of ensuring his right to life, this does not condone theft as condemned in contemporary society, nor violence deployed as a weapon in individual struggle, let alone as an instrument of propaganda.

‘What do we want? We have spelled out a thousand times. We seek the establishment of a new society wherein all of its members may have their material, moral and intellectual needs catered for in full. “To each according to his needs, from each according to his strength and capabilities.” We want that society to be without bosses, without government, without coercion of any sort. No slaves, no victims of their fellow men. A free society of free men.

‘We seek the emancipation of men, women, both the sexes, all the races. We seek complete emancipation within the context of a fundamentally transfigured society.

‘Boundless progress and infinite perfection also, with ever-increasing well being.

‘Ourselves at present: If, desiring all this, we were to await its arrival by means of improved social machinery, we would be deluded.

‘Daily we propagate our ideals and seek to imbue individuals and groups with them. Daily we strive to be more anarchist and to conform a little more with anarchism, which in turn is imperceptibly filling new horizons.

‘We do not want to be aloof from any events that may contribute to the advance of progress, but out commitment will never make us lose sight of our goal and our principles. Our contribution to forward movement is never intended to favor some at the expense of others, but rather to propel society in the direction of our views. We are not shy of new political and social forms that may bring us some slight easing of our onerous and tragic lot, but we will never abandon our views.

‘Communism, the state, politics and us: We are anti-politics and anti-Statists, and when we say anti-politics we mean that we are against all politicians whether they be called Marxists, socialists or communists. We are against the State, whether it be aristocratic, bourgeois or ‘proletarian’. We are against all organized violence.

‘We are absolutely sure that states have but one mission: to watch over iniquity or privilege. Upon abolition of both of these, what use is the State?

‘Orchestration? Direction? Very well. But not from the top down, but from the bottom up. With the power to orchestrate, appoint and dismiss being wholly invested in collectivities.

‘Syndicalism and us: The revolutionary syndicalism affiliated to the AIT in Berlin we find attractive. As workers, we are almost all active in the ranks of the National Confederation of Labor (CNT). But our mission is not wholly consumed by being active in trade unionism. We are men and some are not subject to the yoke of bourgeois exploitation. Consequently, it is not enough to be active inside the union. Our mission has a more significant complement. Outside of the unions, absolutely independently, we disseminate our theories, form our groups, organize rallies, publish anarchist reading materials and sow the seed of anarchism in very direction.

‘We seek the utter emancipation of all human beings without distinctions of any sort, not even class distinctions. Our struggle is more comprehensive, more global. There is a place among us for all who aspire to a society without government, whatever their conception of how post revolutionary society should be organized (be it communist or individualistic). In revolutions to come we want, if possible, to avoid what happened in Russia. What always has happened. When anarchists instigate and inspire the revolution, it almost always proceeds along the proper lines; but when anarchist activity dies down, the revolution deviates from its course and anarchists — as in Russia — are the favorite victims of the inevitable exploiters of revolutions.

‘Conclusions: It is, then necessary and urgent that we organize ourselves in anarchist groupings in order to impregnate the anarchist revolution.

‘We have spoken of the approaching revolution. We harbor no doubts that the social revolution is drawing nearer by giant steps. The gangrenous old politicking is cornered, in disarray and absolutely beaten, but not in the eyes of those who are now in government. We have to ensure it does not make a recovery.

‘The men of 13 September, the ones who were to have cured the nation’s ills within 90 days, have devastated it completely. Behind the scenes, Maura and the reaction govern. The Directory is only the fig leaf for Maurism and the most degenerate and venal politicking. Out of an instinct for survival, the country must remove these folk from power.

‘We have never imagined that the main authors of the coup d’état are prompted by bona fides, but are, rather, swollen with ambition and presumption. But even if that were the case, they can offer a solution to nothing. Less even than the politicians.

‘Consequently, revolution draws near. Let us anarchists strive to acquit ourselves well in it and to propel it as far forward as we may.

Salud y revolución

The Anarchist Liaison Committee of Catalonia. [32]