Fire to the anarchist unions: chronicles of a death foretold

Introduction

This text is an anarcha-feminist critique of the process of neoliberalisation in trade union disagreements and internal struggles between CNT-AIT and CNT-CIT, which unfortunately are neither isolated nor exceptional cases. This struggle is dismantling anarcho-syndicalism at the local level with international repercussions, and we are surprised that it is mostly being met in silence. It seems to us that there is a historical amnesia on how these events could have been prevented and even more on how each step in such a process should be approached through direct action. Since the split between the CNT-AIT and CNT-CIT, the normalisation of punitive values and practices that correspond more to capitalism than to anarchist spaces were reinforced and made visible. Unfortunately, the current situation of the CNT may be a result of the lack of self-criticism that has been missing since the beginning of the confederation, when militant participation of women was denied, or the recognition of the narrow focus on trade union struggles within capitalist parameters in the gallows of labour.

Since 2019, when the CNT-CIT filed the complaint against CNT-AIT at the Audiencia Nacional, there has been time to initiate internal and external processes within anarcho-syndicalist spaces to weave alliances by reflecting and planning acts of direct action to break and confront the process of splitting and neoliberalisation of the movement. The written expressions of solidarity that have been published so far are important, but they do not concretise any joint strategy based on anarchist principles. Anarcho-syndicalism as a whole is also positioning itself in silence, which is unfortunately reminiscent of the centrist positions to which we do not want to compare ourselves.

The situation through which we are unfortunately living right now, with the questions that we will try to answer with this text, are a culminating moment that has been brewing for a long time due to a lack of vision in the reconstruction of anarchisms and anarcho-syndicalism. Already in 2023 the CGT, CNT-CIT and Solidaridad Obrera made the agreement ‘To the working class, for mobilisation and confluence’. Here it became clear once again the reformist and visionless character that should have been a reference point for anti-capitalist positioning and for the break with the internal patriarchy that since its inception has marked the evolution of the anarchist unions in the Iberian territory. The joint action on three points (the defence of public pensions, the defence of equality in the workplace and the end of repression against social movements and the workers' movement) are biased points that exclude anarchist reconstructions and struggles in many towns.

Could the general silence in the face of such a flagrant situation as the one we refer to be due to the fact that the process of confluence between CNT-CIT, CGT and Solidaridad Obrera requires a total absence of criticism of the CIT's denunciation of the AIT to the Audiencia Nacional? Or is the silence around this a price to pay for not breaking the fragile anarcho-syndicalist confluence? Perhaps there is simply total indifference, even acquiescence, or a kind of amusement. But the truth is that it is probably a bit of everything mixed with a dash of aesthetic and unethical strategy, vanguardist aspirations, unscrupulousness and self-deception.

The questions are many, and from our position the question is to understand the reasons for accepting participation in state legal systems as a solution within anarchisms and anarcho-syndicalism. There is a complete abandonment of anarchist ethics and principles and the loss of the internationalist vision, and together they testify to a lack of collective responsibility and contextualised vision in the struggles of this century.

We know that currently in our context it is not easy to always act according to anarchist practice. But it should not be too much to ask for a minimum coherence between the actions we choose to follow and maintain the anarchist principles of struggle against capitalism and all its state and corporate institutions, not only on paper but also in the strategies of struggle. Organisations (like people) are what they do and not what they say they are. In the same way that, at least some of us, reflect on whether this or that thing we do is anarchist, this parameter of coherence should also be used to look at organisations.

We want to focus on six critical questions that we want to discuss, closing with an essential discussion on reconstruction beyond the neoliberal reality: what kind of example is being set in society from the anarchist movements when anarcho-syndicalist groups are absorbed into the state system that historically has always been one of our enemies? What does it say about the lack of historical responsibility of anarcho-syndicalist groups and others who silently accept the situation – within a context of survival in a global ecocide with fascist and warmongering uprisings – in a complete lack of political education through exemplary anarchist practice?

Why did we get into the game of courts?

As we said in the introduction, the most immediate question would be this, and it is surprising that this question does not resonate everywhere: what is more disturbing, that an anarchist union should use the national court or that this should remain an elephant in the room? Because it is conceivable that a collective would do this (or not), but it is much more difficult to understand and justify that various anarcho-syndicalists do it as if it were the logical solution to resolve the conflict created by CNT-CIT. And who says anarcho-syndicalists, says anarchist movements. For it is precisely this neglect of basic ethics and the capacity for critical thinking that may be one of the reasons why the CNT-CIT has denounced the CNT-AIT under the passive gaze of the majority.

If we have reached this point it is, firstly, because of the authoritarian and neoliberal practice of some; secondly, because of the omission of the whole context and environment (which is already a positioning); and, thirdly, because of the lack of forceful responses to it. And this is something that has been dragging on for some time.

And how does one arrive at the normalisation of authoritarian and neoliberal practices, that are clearly evident, within an anarchist union? The moment you perceive the union as property, you are already thinking in liberal terms. The moment you think that the project is an end in itself, you are already abandoning the idea of what anarchism means. The moment an acronym becomes a hierarchical institution based on power, the principles of direct democracy and solidarity have already been corrupted. How many times have we witnessed this illogical mania of wanting to defend the collective and its integrity against alleged external threats that do not even exist? And how many repressive and authoritarian dynamics have been deployed as a result of these manias?

The maxim of liberty is not a dead letter, it is not your freedom to make a collective what you want it to be, liberty is not as simple as ‘my freedom ends where the other's begins’. These two ideas are either egoistic and the germ of capitalist cannibalism, or narrowly civil. If we have not yet understood that freedom is freedom for all and that authoritarianism therefore has no place, then we have not understood the basis of anarchism. Without solidarity, mutual support and collective responsibility, freedom is meaningless, giving rise to liberal behaviour, as is the case with the anarchist unions and their internecine struggles.

Is such a complaint a one-off exception within the state legal system? No, it is not. It comes from a drift. You don't even need to know exactly what has happened over the last few years between these two unions to deduce that you don't get to the Audiencia Nacional from one day to the next. There is an intention here, there is a long-term goal, a strategy and a tactic, so it is not enough to simply say that it is a battle for acronyms.

Does the environment that has witnessed all this bear part of the responsibility for having allowed this process of denunciation to begin? Has anything been done to prevent it and to seek solutions through anarchist transformative justice? Nothing significant and courageous. Or maybe there is and we have no information about it. But at first glance there seems to be a widespread acceptance and naturalisation of bringing anarchist struggles into the state justice system.

How else can this point be reached? With the intentional abandonment of anarchist practices.

Today it is CNT-CIT that is using the courts, in the eighties it was CNT-AIT; then it was another spectacle in the courts and cross-suits between the CNT and CGT. We did not live through that, we do not intend to delve into that past, only the present moment we live in, which, unfortunately, seems to be the same. Nobody was shocked then, nobody is shocked now. We continue with the ‘and you more’ and the ‘me, me, me with me’. Let's see if the problem is going to be private property and patrimony, the selfishness and cannibalistic competitiveness of the system, which anarchism criticises so much.

Sabotage - have we forgotten?

The second question that arises in this situation is the handling of the legal process initiated against the CNT-AIT allegedly for the use of the name and the headquarters. Here it is clear to everyone that the de facto position of the CNT-CIT to involve in a conflict with another anarchist union the state judicial system, which in the case of Spain is a post-Francoist system, already directly invalidates their position as anarchists. This break with facts, which are on top of having contact with police forces and transphobic groups previously, should drop the false mask of the CNT-CIT for good and simply be expelled from any international confederation that advocates anarchist principles. At this historical moment we cannot let such undeniable and destructive inconsistencies pass, and therefore from now on people should no longer in any way think of the CNT-CIT as an anarcho-syndicalist group.

At the same time it is interesting to see how the CNT-AIT compañeras allow themselves to be involved in the state judicial system in order to defend themselves. Long gone are the days when anarcho-syndicalists flatly refused to recognise and accept not only the existence of the state judiciary, but actively participate in it. We think that in this case we should return to the practice of sabotage. Don't show up at the trials, don't obey the judgement, let alone be present in this capitalist circus we are living through. We know that the consequences of such a sabotage can be very serious, and at the same time we must think about the long-term signals we are giving.

As anarcha-feminists we urge that we draw on international solidarity to return to our principles of sabotage of the systems of state and capitalist oppression and control.

Anarcho-syndicalist solidarity… for what?

It has cost us and is costing us a lot to see demonstrations against the actions of CNT-CIT from the anarchist movement, from the other anarchist unions and from the CNT-CIT militants themselves. At the time of finishing this text we have seen that some CNT-AIT unions at the international level have taken a stand against this whole circus, admitting that indeed this movement of the CIT is trying to wipe out an anarcho-syndicalist union. For the rest of anarcho-syndicalism in Spain, as we have said, the cause is probably this anarcho-syndicalist confluence. In this confluence there are curious but interesting facts to take into account in order to have a better view of the situation.

For example, the CGT until relatively recently did not consider itself anarcho-syndicalist as such and in fact it is not clear whether internally, as well as considering itself anarcho-syndicalist (i.e. a concrete tool), it considers itself anarchist. Moreover, the CGT split from the CNT at the time in order to be able to function in different way through state support. Crudely summarised: they decided to become part of the workplace committees and the electoral game, as a strategy of external struggle; and internally they ended up mired in the struggles between federations and unions with greater or lesser affiliation, promoting quantity not quality and the game of votes. The CNT-CIT so far does not seem to have entered the Committees, but it has entered the drift of ‘the more members I have, the more weight I bring, and at the same time the more votes’, as well as falling into bureaucratisation and the danger of corruption with the creation of the confederal technical cabinet. We cannot fail to mention that it is not spared from the corridor dialogues either, as in other anarcho-syndicalist unions and organisations, to accumulate votes and positions, to win in internal strategies or to have the capacity to stack meetings and to condition decisions with whipped votes. A curious way of understanding anarchism.

This is not to say that all militants are in favour of the reformist drift that these ways of functioning represent, but it is also good to appeal to the responsibility of each union when it comes to tolerating, justifying or omitting situations generated in the vacuum of internal practices in anarchist unions. Above all to be able to get away from idle clichés such as ‘for lack of bread, what's good is cake’, taking for granted that there is nowhere else to organise than the Committees, or that in such spaces they can influence the workers even if there are also negative influences. But let's be realistic, the mass of workers are not eagerly awaiting the next anarcho-syndicalist communiqué, nor are they being transformed or educated for direct action by the tools of the system. So the above-mentioned platitudes are only disclaimers that simply support the incoherent internal activities in the anarchist unions as a result of the lack of interest in self-criticism.

The lack of response from the rest of the anarchist world and social media is probably due to several factors. Firstly, many may feel that the whole conflict is alien to them, that they are unaware of the situation, or even that many people are unaware of anarchist movements and anarcho-syndicalist organisations such as the CNT. The second factor may be the lack of connection of ordinary people with anarcho-syndicalism because the former does not always connect with labour struggles and the latter does not always connect with social struggles (this deserves a separate text). Thirdly, each organisation tends to have its affinities and alliances, with which it also draws up strategies, and if it does not do it with them, it does it through them, using them, intruding or creating its own entities. It is not very different from the strategy of political parties. Nowadays, when we move largely through networks, immediacy, the reel and the hashtag, we must also pay attention to the approaches of large organisations towards the collective, platforms or social centres that dominate the media scene. This is not to say that the silence of the anarchist movement is due to clientelism, or perhaps not only that. It's simply that the immediacies and the fact that we move only in a small environment outside of the big social discussions does not give space for reflection, broadening and critique. We must also remember that, even without bad faith, cronyism within the anarchist unions, collectives and their affiliations end up conditioning the external view that one wants to give of the questionable situations that have occurred in recent years with purges, splits and internal power struggles. There has been time to help, to ask questions and to publicly question taking an anarchist union to court and if it has not been done it is because it has not been considered important.

For all these reasons it is also difficult to see what the CNT-AIT's response is in all this. We understand that it is a long conflict and that being denounced in the Audiencia Nacional is serious and generates many individual and collective emotions, but it is surprising what we interpret as a lack of response from the CNT-AIT. Yes, we have seen communiqués from the CNT-AIT at the international level asking for solidarity. But what does this solidarity mean? That manifestos should be published? That money should be sent to help pay the money that the CNT-CIT is asking for? In what sense are they asking for solidarity and with what concrete actions that really represent a before and after, an expression of what the CNT-CIT's denunciation in the Audiencia Nacional really means?

It would be more understandable and effective to call for the use of traditionally anarchist tools at the international level against the CNT-CIT and the Audiencia Nacional, to raise serious debates at the international level and at all levels with urgency, as well as to call for solidarity to face the consequences of directly refusing to give legitimacy to the trial, fine, court, CIT and the neo-liberal farce that all this entails.

Another point to reflect on is the total lack of transparency of CNT-CIT. They are not communicating or explaining anything. They are not stating their position, nor are they responding with arguments to what the CNT-AIT explains, nor are they arguing what the situation is all about. And this is nothing more than a declaration of intentions. Moreover, the level of toxicity of this silence is devastating. There is an even more worrying point about the devastating silence of the CIT as an international organisation. The trivialisation of the consequences of one's actions. It seems that the CIT thinks that if they let the system finish off the AIT, they are not to blame. That if it is someone else who evicts them, or fries them with sanctions, they won’t have their hands stained by the recalcitrant betrayal they are carrying out between anarchists. This is called the banality of evil and is nothing but another bureaucrat's self-delusion. And maybe it is a drift; remember the image of the mossos d'esquadra (the Catalan autonomous police) blocking the way and repressing the people who were demonstrating in front of the CNT-CIT headquarters in Barcelona because of a transphobic event they organised. The CNT-CIT compañeros did not physically attack anyone themselves, this anarchist union literally used the police force to carry out the repression for them. Obviously they were responsible for having used this systemic tool of violence; those who sign a death sentence we don’t stop being responsible when the sentence is carried out by another.

What is the CNT-CIT going to achieve with all this conflict? Gain some premises with people inside? Put them up for sale or rent the CNT-AIT headquarters with people inside as a vulture fund and wait for others to evict them, to have the consolation and self-deception of having clean hands? Will they call the police again? Will they get involved with DesOkupa? Or will they get into another court? How long will they think that they have no direct responsibility?

Refusal to pay the fines

We know that the consequences of not legitimising the process, the Audiencia Nacional or the fine can be serious. But here the third question arises: why is it not raised and made public that the process is not given validity and that nothing will be paid?

The consequences of attending the trial, of falling into this legal game is not only to endorse the action of CNT-CIT and endorse the court, it is to abandon the usual anarchist practices of sabotage and refusal to abide by the decisions of the state powers in similar situations. And this, to be fair, is not something only the CNT-AIT should be questioned for, it is a general tendency of all anarcho-syndicalists and part of the anarchist movement. The response to the conflict generated by the CNT-CIT from a neoliberal perspective is framed in a context of anarchist methods and proposals falling into oblivion in a serious international situation of ecocide, the rise of fascism and racism, transphobia, ableism, homophobia and machismo, as well as brutal neoliberalisation and normalisation of genocides. Are we willing to completely abandon our anarchist red lines that unite our principles, our ethics and our tools? So why do we talk about anarchism or that we carry a new world in our hearts when we do not build it by defending our principles with deeds?

One of the anarcho-syndicalist tasks should be precisely to make a common front against the oppressive tools of the state authorities. Here, too, at the international level, we would have liked to see that the solidarity they talk about in communiqués is transformed into concrete strategies of defence against the state, alongside the actual direct action of refusing punitive financial systems. This matter still has a remedy, but it must be part of a broader strategy to resume anarchist strategies of organisational self-defence, both locally and internationally.

Neoliberal struggles for private property and the intangible heritage of patents - where are the occupations?

A very concrete point of the CNT-CIT's denunciation of the CNT-AIT is to be able to own the buildings of the CNT-AIT headquarters. It would not be necessary to point out the contradiction of having a dispute over private property, since anyone with a minimal anti-capitalist perspective knows that private property is the main expression of everything we have been fighting against for centuries.

This denunciation is one of the points that have also remained without a forceful response, reflecting and publicly stating, not only from the CNT-AIT, but from international anarchist movements, that regardless of the ruling of the national court, the headquarters will be occupied if they are taken by state and police force. The question on this issue, then, is why we are waiting for an institutional body that we don't even believe in and that we actually want to abolish, to make a decision on this issue. Whatever happens at the Audiencia Nacional, we encourage the occupation, not only of the CNT-AIT headquarters, but all the places that are needed to be able to rebuild our movements and our anarchist unions.

If we take a historical look at anarchist movements, are physical spaces such a trigger for our struggles that they must be defended as private property? Anarchist struggles take place in whatever space is necessary, without the need to have them institutionally approved. We are aware that occupations have been persecuted by the media in recent years by demonising them. Part of the neoliberal propaganda is precisely to delegitimise certain collective practices in favour of so-called legal practices. This should not permeate within anarchist movements, rather we should continue to struggle and and organise popular education so that people understand that being able to have autonomous and free places to live, to organise, to meet and to maintain our communities is a right.

Do so many people really think that if the CNT-AIT is left without its heritage, anarcho-syndicalism would be lost? It is the people practising our anarchist principles and ideals who build and defend anarchist movements, not the walls, doors or furniture of a building. It would be important to rethink whether, apart from the pain of the loss of a historical testimony such as a headquarters building, anarchist struggles go far beyond private material properties which in reality are an invention of capitalism.

In addition, we have the issue of patents as part of private intellectual property. To resort to the registration of the CNT-CIT's acronym in the Spanish Patent Office is not only another sign of this neoliberalisation and of believing that the acronym of an anarchist union is property, it is also a contradiction in terms from an anarchist point of view. Now we are a brand? What a nice strategy and future awaits us. Moreover, accusing others of creating confusion in the use of acronyms when you are the one who wants to leave the space or you are the one who registers acronyms... It is to move into an open position of manipulation and gaslighting.

But the last straw is the legal argument that the CNT-AIT is not recognised because it does not have a legal personality and that this also creates a conflict over the headquarters. Since when did acronyms become important from an anarchist point of view? Does this mean that most of the social movements are not recognised either?

What are the consequences of the absolute betrayal of anarchist ethics and the destruction of the red line for the construction of utopias?

The mere fact that an organisation that considers itself anarcho-syndicalist uses without any hang ups or visible contradictions an instrument of systemic power such as the Audiencia Nacional is effectively a betrayal of anarchism for several reasons. Due to the lack of transparency and communication, we do not know if there have been even a few demonstrations by CNT-CIT affiliates or local unions against this nonsense in the state context.

We will never tire of repeating that anarchism is not based on homogeneous or unique prescriptions, and that it requires a great deal of flexibility, adaptability and constant collective evolution. But it does raise a series of red lines in terms of the cohesion between our ways of doing, ways of acting and ethics, which are those that have historically differentiated anarchism from other political, social and economic proposals. The CNT-CIT has gone far beyond these limits by adopting practices of power behind the acronym of a labour confederation, while the CNT-AIT has a lot of political work to do in terms of self-criticism and an important redirection in the historical context we live in.

What has happened to the maxim that exercising power corrupts and submitting to it degrades? It cannot remain a mere slogan that we put on a banner on social networks. In practice the CNT-CIT is using the tools of the master for a purpose which, moreover, has no social or collective character, but reinforces capitalist principles. The CNT-CIT is exercising power, but is not considering whether it is submitting to it at the same time, when they are falling into a neoliberal capitalist line of struggle altogether. They are corrupting and degrading themselves without any scruple or shame. Is it possible that the habit of limiting anarcho-syndicalist action (not only on the part of the CNT-CIT) to disputes in courts, tribunals and company negotiations, could lead to the total legitimisation of bodies that are not much more than an arm of the state? These consequences of the trajectory that these anarcho-syndicalists are following need to be put openly on the international boards, so that the red lines of anarchism that are now being degraded can be taken up again.

We therefore continue to reflect on the construction of anarchist utopias by asking ourselves what has been made of the principles of self-management or self-organisation? Yes, they should also be applicable in cases of internal and external conflicts in our movements, also when it comes to how we relate to each other and, above all, in what future society we are supposed to be building. Not only are we not setting an example to the rest of the anarchist movement, but we are setting a completely regrettable precedent. You can't go about claiming self-organisation and self-management as titles on paper and in talks and then denounce another anarchist union in the Audiencia Nacional; and who says another anarchist union says any organisation, group or person. The level of ethical and political renunciation is extremely high and unfortunately affects the whole movement, its work and its future. The principle of cooperation and anarchist compañerismo has been put aside in order to perpetuate a conflict that could perhaps have been redirected among the whole movement, obviously with all the in-depth debates that would have been required. Criticism and self-criticism is another anarchist practice that has been forgotten in all this.

Those of us who have been and are inside anarchist movements, organisations and unions know how to appeal to non-punitivism when applying direct action or self-defence in cases of aggression. We know how self-organisation and self-management are used to criticise other anarcho-syndicalists or other movements. We know how people use phrases like ‘don't build your house with the master’s tools’ or ‘don't exercise power because it corrupts’. And where do all these phrases and claims end up? It is shown, once again, that they are simply words that make us sound radical, but which are turned around and used as they please.

The anarchist utopia is not simply based on organisational instructions to be followed, it appeals to conscience, coherence and practice, understood also as the acts and behaviours that compañeros exercise in our daily lives. It does not matter how much internal structure you make in an organisation, how many statutes, protocols and commissions are created. If there is no great collective responsibility to follow coherent practices and concrete ethics, the construction of utopias does not really work. We already know this from all the cases of sexist, patriarchal, homophobic and transphobic violence we have witnessed, and the failure to address them without having a collective responsibility to unlearn negative behaviours, let alone create structures that protect the victims and hold the aggressors accountable. It is the same in this case; if there is no anarchist mentality, no anti-authoritarian action in conflicts between anarchist groups and movements, the name of an organisation will never make a palpable difference in practice. But the worst thing is that the consequences of this can be dire, and this lack of example and responsibility is devastating.

As anarcha-feminists it should not be said that these bodies such as the Audiencia Nacional are just another arm of a patriarchal system that we should keep in our sights. There is no justification whatsoever from an anarcha-feminist point of view for their use. We know that there is, at least in the white European context, a kind of apprehension to use collective tools to confront aggressions, also to deal with conflicts. But from anarcha-feminism we are committed to putting these proposals into practice, which could perhaps have been applied in the case in question. In this way, not only are the instruments of the system abandoned and no longer legitimised, but also the societies we propose are gradually being created.

The unwillingness to apply these ways of resolving conflicts and dealing with aggression has not only resulted in the maintenance of cisheteropatriarchal dynamics. It has also fossilised a lack of libertarian practice to resolve situations such as the one at hand. Both anarcha-feminism and anarchism have talked at length about how to resolve things without having to resort to states and bourgeois justice. Anarchism has considerable confidence in the creative capacities of human beings. In fact, nowadays, the words punitivism and anti-punitivism ring a bell, especially in the context of resolving cases of male violence and abuse. So there is no excuse for implementing other forms, not even that of not having time, because it is not that the needs of the 21st century are being met, not that anarchist unions are mass organisations. Appealing to both lack of time and lack of references would be self-deception.

Bourgeois justice and the judicial, legal and repressive apparatuses of states are based on the philosophy that they are necessary for the resolution of conflicts in order for society to function justly. Anarchism rejects these means to that end. So, since surely the CNT-CIT's big argument to justify itself must be ‘these cases are brought by this court, we don't like it but we have no choice’, it is not just a poor argument. On the one hand, they avoid any accountability, on the other they remove themselves from the context and the consequences in a kind of almost magical mental process of dissociation, and at the same time, excuse their troupe. They simply talk like anyone who defends and embraces the ruling institutions and is ignorant of anarchism. It is not only short-sighted, it is deceitful. Without practice, then, there are only courts, bureaucracy, circuses and the system.

We hope that from this moment on the CNT-CIT will never again speak of the Audiencia Nacional as a court that represses social movements, it would not be credible from them. This is what happens when, on the one hand, we use revolutionary phrases and organise theoretical anarchist formations like hot cakes, but have a questionable practice.

Lack of a present-future vision of how to rebuild beyond neoliberal societies

We think that anarcho-syndicalist struggles should not rely on reforms that have been fought for hundreds of years without any significant progress. Moreover, in this historical moment of globalisation of the labour force and ecocide, anyone would argue that the international line of struggle should not be the abolition of the workforce but more community-based and self-organised social organisations around mutual care. The good intentions of supposed labour and monetary equality in a society without repression can no longer be our ultimate goals as they were more than 100 years ago.

Right now we should be having radical critical visions for the abolition of militaristic and oppressive intergovernmental organisations such as NATO and the International Monetary Fund. An important struggle is to make a shift towards renewable energies without neo-colonialism in the Global South and above all with collective ownership of energy sources. We should be building alternatives for sustainability based on mutual care and mutual aid outside of digital banking control. The options are many, and must be connected in order to fight against the various forms of oppression that we clearly see have been normalised and adopted by anarchist unions. We are no longer satisfied with the three points of struggle arrived at in 2023, when the planet is burning.

These present struggles, together with the lack of vision of collective reconstructions in the future, make anarchist movements and anarchist unions drown as real proposals in a world where people are tired of surviving. As a symbol that we must restart and reconnect, to continue fighting against the real enemy: capitalism and all its vassals.

So, after having presented our reflections with the six questions, it remains for us only to think about whether it is indeed time to do a good house cleaning and take fire at the CNT and rebuild ourselves again. Nobody wants to go back to the past or lose tears over an institutional rupture within anarcho-syndicalism. The question now is to be able to learn from all these situations and to continue building from historically contextualised anarchist practices in the 21st century in a conscious, coherent and inclusive way.

Sonia Muñoz Llort and Mireia Redondo Prat