Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI)
이베리아 아나키스트 연맹
A federation founded in Valencia in 1927 by anarchist groups from Spain and Portugal, to keep the anarcho-syndicalist union CNT on an anarchist path. In the early 1930s it pushed the moderates out and gained control within the CNT; the two were so close that they are often called "CNT-FAI". In the Spanish Civil War its members were at the forefront of the fight against Franco's forces.
In depth
The FAI arose from a conference of anarchist groups from Spain, Portugal and Spanish exiles in France held on a beach in Valencia on 25–26 July 1927, after a preliminary meeting in Marseille the year before. "Iberian" expressed the aim of uniting Spanish and Portuguese anarchists in one organisation, but Portuguese participation later ceased and it became entirely Spanish. It challenged the CNT bureaucracy, which it saw becoming a mediator between labour and capital under Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorship.
From 1931, in the first years of the Second Republic, the FAI drove the pro-Republican "Treintistas" out of office in the CNT; they formed anti-FAI opposition unions in March 1933, and the most moderate unionists under Ángel Pestaña founded the Syndicalist Party in April 1934. By the outbreak of the civil war the CNT leadership was firmly under FAI control. The FAI was named as the instigator of the Alto Llobregat rising of 1932 and of the January 1933 insurrection.
When the war broke out, FAI members led revolutionary collectivisation and militias in Catalonia and fought mainly in the Eastern Army on the Aragon front. In the Barcelona May Days of 1937 they stood with the CNT against the Catalan government and the communists. Since Franco's death and the transition to democracy the FAI has continued to function; it belongs to the International of Anarchist Federations and publishes Tierra y Libertad.