We, the Anarchists! : A study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) 1927–1937

Notes
Arnold Lunn, Spanish Rehearsal, London, 1937, p. 272 Noam Chomsky, ‘Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship’, American Power and the New Mandarins, New York, 1967, p. 76. Pere Gabriel, Anarquismo en España, in G. Woodcock. Ibid. For the full text of the Preamble and Program of the Alliance see Sam Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchism, Montreal, 1980, pp. 426–428. Diego Abad de Santillán, Contribución a la historia del movimiento obrero español, Mexico, 1962, Vol 1. p. 116. Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, London, 1938, p. 86. Gabriel, op. cit., p. 364. ‘Out of a total membership of 26,585 in 1911, some 12,000 were from Catalonia, some 6,000 were Andalusians and a little more than 1,000 Valencians.’ Ibid. (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 23 : The FAI Turned Upside Down
23: The FAI Turned Upside Down From 21 July onward the FAI, led by Diego Abad de Santillán, ceased to operate as an independent entity. The trabazón and the Civil War had fuzed both organizations into an entity known as the CNT–FAI. However, the sharing of power with the other political parties, first through the Militias Committee, then, later, through the Generalitat and central governments, also meant the sharing of values. It was not long before the bourgeois utilitarian strategy of expediency displaced traditional anarchist concern for the values of social justice. From 21 July onwards, as we have seen, social revolution was removed from the agenda of the joint CNT–FAI committees. The revolutionary events that were, by that time, moving into top gear in industry and in the countryside, particularly in Aragón, were ignored. Other than calling off the general strike declared on 19 July the higher committees p... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 22 : 19 July 1936
22: 19 July 1936 A rightist coup was imminent. Precise information as to the date of the military rising had been obtained as early as 13 July by CNT–FAI the CNT Regional Defense Committee of Catalonia from their informants in the barracks. The anti-fascist initiative was taken by the Defense Committee, who began to speed up their plans to resist the military, but their work was deliberately obstructed by a governmental decree on 14 July that ordered the closure of all CNT locals – a gesture intended primarily, no doubt, to appease the right, in the hope of defuzing the growing political tensions. On 16 July the Catalan CNT convened a Regional Plenum to finalize resistance plans. That same morning the Generalitat requested a meeting with representatives of the Regional Committees of the CNT and FAI to discuss collaboration against the approaching ‘fascist danger’. A special five-man committee was appointed t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 21 : Plots, Plans and the Popular Front
21: Plots, Plans and the Popular Front A series of economic and social crises and major scandals in late 1935 involving the bribery and corruption of government ministers finally brought down the right-wing government of Alejandro Lerroux. The Estraperlo Scandal, the one that attracted most publicity, involved the presentation of gold watches to members of the government and Radical Party in return for the licensing of ‘fixed’ electrical roulette wheels in casinos. New elections were arranged for February 1936. The electoral campaign of the right, centered round Gil Robles, whom President Alcalá Zamora disliked and had been avoiding appointing as prime minister, was aimed at establishing a totalitarian regime. The left, on the other hand, unwilling to go into the elections disunited, formed a ‘Popular Front’ coalition consisting of socialists, republicans, communists and other Marxist groupings, as well as the Cat... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Chapter 20 : Interregnum — 1934–1935
20: Interregnum — 1934–1935 In the recriminations that followed October, the CNT’s alleged lack of solidarity was singled out by the Marxist press as a prime contributory factor to the ignominious collapse of the rising. From exile in Paris, the Socialist Party leader, Indalecio Prieto, claimed in a statement to the United Press Agency that one of the reasons for the failure of the rising — which they, the socialist leaders had not wanted, regarding it as premature and inadequately prepared — was the abstention of the CNT. Rafael Vidiella, the Catalan PSOE leader, who wrote in Leviatán, did not share this opinion: ‘So what happened that on the morning of 7 October the Generalitat was to surrender without offering any resistance and without being defended — after a few brief hours…? Quite simply, what happened is that today’s revolutions cannot be... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The Dictatorship 1923–1927
3: The Dictatorship 1923–1927 The attitude of the new regime towards the CNT was made clear within 10 days of the coup d’état. On 24 September 1923, Martínez Anido was appointed under-secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. General Arlegui, Anido’s ex-chief of police in Barcelona, the architect of governmental terrorism, was made director general of Public Order. Government strategy, however, proved not to be the expected brutal onslaught on militants or the outlawing of the anarcho-syndicalist union. The method of attack was an oblique one. By selective use of the law the authorities made it impossible for the CNT to continue functioning as a union: delegates collecting union dues were arrested on charges... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Founding Aims
5: Founding Aims The raison d’être of the meeting was: to aggregate, formally, into one peninsular association, the anarchist affinity groups of the three parent organizations, the exiled and dispersed anarchist groups of the Iberian peninsula — Spain’s National Federation of Anarchist Groups, the Federation of Spanish Speaking Anarchist Groups in France and the Portuguese Anarchist Union; and also to propagate anarchist ideas among the people. But most important of all, for the majority of those present, was the need to promote, through the CNT, the parent body to which most of those at the meeting belonged, the Libertarian Communist vision of society and the anti-political and direct-actionist principles adopted at... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The ‘Storm Petrels’ Return
12: The ‘Storm Petrels’ Return The declaration of the Republic permitted the return from exile and the regrouping of the dispersed younger anarchist activists who were to challenge the campaign engineered by Pestaña’s Solidaridad group aimed at weaning the CNT away from its anti-statist and anti-political statutes. As well as confronting what they saw as the institutionalized leadership of the older generation, these young men were to infuse the Spanish anarchist movement with a fresh revolutionary ardor that was to enable it to resist, successfully, a military uprising and lay the foundations of one of the most profound social revolutions in history. Prominent among these were the members of the old Los Solidarios ... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

A Parallel CNT?
8: A Parallel CNT? Trotskyist historian Felix Morrow described the FAI as ‘a highly centralized party apparatus through which it maintained control of the CNT’. American liberal historian Gabriel Jackson who depicted it as ‘the tightly organized elite, which, since 1927, had dominated the CNT’ shared this view. Contemporary participants do not share this view of the FAI. Francisco Carrasquer, a faista, noted: ‘Each FAI group thought and acted as it deemed fit, without bothering about what the others might be thinking or deciding, for there was no intergroup discipline such as was found between communist cells in respect of territory, etc. Secondly, they had no competence, opportunity or jurisdiction — tho... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

1931 — The Conservatorio Congress
13: 1931 — The Conservatorio Congress The 1931 CNT Congress was opened by Ángel Pestaña on behalf of the solidly Catalan fourteen-man National Committee. These men represented a generation of leaders who had been compromised through their relationship with Catalan politicians and who had opted for pragmatic social reform. Their main criterion was that the Republic had to be supported until the organization could be consolidated and all threats of a rightist military coup overcome. They wished to transform a union committed to revolutionary change into the defender of the status quo. The hostile undercurrents boiled to the surface early on in proceedings. Congress quickly became a battlefield in the struggle between the t... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)