The IWA is an international revolutionary workers' association. Founded in Berlin in 1922, for over a century it has been fighting against all odds for workers' self-management and libertarian organization. Currently it has organizations in 21 countries and has expanded to new areas of the globe.

One of the most well-known organizations in our International is the CNT-AIT in Spain. Several years ago, a faction of this organization managed, among other ways by conducting purges, to take defacto control of all the increasingly centralized functions of the organization. It also tried, without success, to disenfranchise the majority of the IWA Sections and, when it failed, tried to “relaunch” the IWA behind closed doors with just two other Sections. Finally, this faction launched the International Confederation of Labor, (in Spanish CIT), consisting of other organizations with other practices than the International Workers' Association, IWA. The CNT-AIT remains the Spanish Section of the IWA, retaining the same principles as the CNT-AIT prior to the attempts to reform the organization on different principles.

One fact that must be stressed is that the Spanish section of CIT, which has a cadre of professional lawyers, claims the exclusive right to the name CNT and all the property that was ever held by the CNT-AIT. This organization has effectively stolen the IWA archives which it keeps in poor conditions in a warehouse outside Toledo, refusing even access to it. It is also suing numerous unions of the CNT-AIT and a libertarian ateneo as well, for enormous amounts of money. This decision to start the suits was made by the lawyers, not by the general membership, showing the authoritarian and vertical direction the union has taken. These suits will be heard in court in September.

Among the things that this Spanish organization is claiming is that the CNT-AIT cannot be called CNT-AIT because the AIT (Spanish acronym for the IWA) does not exist.
This is a really audacious lie told by the Spanish organization of CIT, as it knows absolutely that the IWA exists and has existed for over a century.

We imagine from the legal documents that the unscrupulous band of lawyers will try to use the state to conduct their war against anarcho-syndicalists in Spain by claiming that the IWA has no legal registration in Spain, whereas their organization complies with the state laws, including providing information to the state about their own members.

The lack of ethics in their arguments are appalling. All the more so due to the fact that the name CNT-AIT is also shared by another organization in the IWA, the CNT-AIT France. It was in France that many refugees from the CNT-AIT went after Franco came to power and for years this organization of comrades from France kept the IWA going in the post-war era. Our comrades in France have also undergone some organizational shifts and currently there are 3 organizations called CNT in that country. Are they suing each other and claiming, like the Spanish do, that “they cannot grow” because workers confuse their organizations? Of course not. This is special vindictiveness against our Spanish Section, the CNT-AIT of Spain for failing to follow the people who envision themselves as some vanguard of their organization.

As the IWA, we all stand in solidarity with our Section, the CNT-AIT, which we consider to be the continuation of the historic CNT-AIT in Spain. We also express our disgust at the bald-face lies told by the Spanish organization of the ICL (CIT), which use the state and statist logic and try to claim we don't exist. It is absolute confirmation for us that these people have made a break with libertarian ethics and goals and have moved to a position to act against those who maintain them.

We are the IWA and we are not going anywhere. We are determined to continue our struggle based on libertarian values and maintain a strong horizontal structure in Spain and build new organizations around the world.

The Spanish organization of ICL (CIT), cries to the state's courts that workers “confuse” their organization with CNT-AIT, that they “really want to join them, but join CNT-AIT instead” and that this prevents them from growing. How stupid do these people think workers really are? We do not have those concerns because we think that people who join the CNT-AIT know what it is and what it stands for. At the same time, after having to suffer the bombastic claims of that faction in Spain, who constantly claim and have claimed that the CNT-AIT is just a small, insignificant faction of radicals as compared to their powerful and numerous organization, such claims submitted to the court show the hypocritical lengths to which they will stoop, contradicting their own narrative which they have been pushing for more than a decade.

We are the IWA and we know what we stand for and we know who stands for what in Spain. The state's courts may not like the union which stands for social revolution in that country, it may prefer the watered down legalist impostors, the ones who will bow to its authority in the end. But our victory is to maintain our principles, which nobody has ever managed to take away from us – but by firing squads, not by state repression of any kind.

Long live the IWA and long live the CNT-AIT!

IWA Secretariat