The Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Anarquistas (F.I.J.A.) is born

Why FIJA?

For some time now, a lot has been said about us and our attempt to reorganise the former FIJL. During this time, there has been no shortage of criticism of the acronym we were using at the time, which we have now decided to change. The fact is that we would like to clarify the reasons that lead us to adopt the acronym FIJA instead of FIJL.

We still believe that we are the legacy of the old FIJL, in the sense that we consider ourselves the continuators of its work. In other words, the FIJL was active in a certain field and in a certain way, and it has stopped doing so. We don’t know if this is due to incapacity or rather to a distancing from the ideological lines of organised anarchism. We intend to take up this task again, so necessary in our opinion in the current epoch.

It was this reflection that initially motivated us to adopt the acronym FIJL, given that no other federation, let alone the original federation, was aware of its use. We are now certain of its use by that federation, as well as the linking of these acronyms to the approaches and positions of that federation. In other words, the current use of the name FIJL does not imply a twinning with organised anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, but rather the opposite.

We are aware that defending the acronym FIJL on our part would entail an effort that we think is better spent on street militancy. On the one hand, we would have to fight hard and spend a lot of time in internal debates within the movement to try to show that the real meaning of the acronym does not go along with those who now say that they make up this federation; and on the other hand, we would have to fight to gain some trust among comrades who are very valid, but who were left behind in the time of crisis between the FIJL and other organisations of the movement. Other factors can also be added to this, such as dragging along with the acronym the repression that hit the federation so hard years ago.

On the other hand, we do not believe that it is beneficial for anarchism to have two federations calling themselves FIJL. These situations tend to create diffuse situations, confuse people who approach the ideas and burn out militants who, tired of working their asses off in debates and struggles, end up disassociating themselves from the movement, which in the end is the one who suffers the most.

All this leads us to think that dragging the FIJL acronym, although it may be the one that best defines us, also means dragging a series of internal and external conflicts derived from the actions of other people, which should not concern us at all. That is why, while claiming what we really want to be (a federation in the style of the old FIJL, which was twinned with the libertarian movement), we opted for other acronyms to avoid many problems that we have not even created ourselves.

The acronym we have chosen is F.I.J.A. (Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Anarquistas). We hope that situations like the one that has arisen with the acronym will not set the tone for this new federation, and that the daily struggle to spread anarchism, together with the work of other sister organisations, will one day materialise in the social revolution we long for, will (we are sure of this).