Barcelona: Anti-election attacks claimed by Anti-authoritarian Insurgency of Action / FAI (Catalunya-Spain)

November 23rd, 2011
November 17-20, 2011Coordinated actions by Anti-authoritarian Insurgency of Action / Informal Anarchist Federation
– translated by war on society:
Communique:
We always ask ourselves why in the Spanish state the strategy of a unified international federation has not been proposed. Instead of waiting and continuing to ask questions, we offer a small step.
After about one year of small anonymous actions of sabotages, failures, and small victories, we have decided to contemplate Anarchy from another perspective, thus we have made the decision to form part of the Informal Anarchist Federation and of the International Revolutionary Front. We want to experiment with the feeling that comes with adhering to this project, to study new forms of understanding Chaos* and participate in all fields of struggle. Anarchism is a movement of liberation, a weapon of struggle, a form of life and/or action, or at least many understand it as such. We want to have an opportunity to have a crucial role in the social war and beginning with the daily practice, we will be steadfast. Likewise, we intend to ‘open the can’ or raise from self-criticism new forms of direct action and animate informal, horizontal and combative organization. We believe in anti-authoritarianism, in chaos and in a strong anarchist praxis, likewise the constant reproduction of sabotages, boycotts and attacks that trouble and could undermine capital’s projects and capital itself. Also in this form of struggle we opt for and accept the direct attack against Nazi-fascism; in the struggle against authority and against the system, the powerful attack against Nazi-fascism is another front, and the direct and from-behind struggle to crush those who believe themselves racially or politically superior to the rest is fundamental. We seek the creation of a continual situation of tension and conflictuality against power.
“In the face of a system of control and domination, only the combative struggle can prevail”
We understand attacks and the destruction of the social order as a very valid and decisive tool, however, we do not make it a revolutionary dogma nor a fetishism, and depending on the situation its application, reproduction and deployment can vary. Following reflection, thought and analysis, we believe that in attacks a certain quality is required, in effect, without leaving the quantitative aside.
We consider it clear that the qualitative is essential, we must look to harm the system and its functioning at the root; that is, for example seeking some way of striking the consumption of commodities such as the attack on WalMart in Mexico, sabotaging an election day and making its normal functioning impossible, destroying the machines and possessions of some despot, and aggressions and direct attacks that provoke true fear in those responsible for governmental terror. Also it can be very effective to saturate the metropolitan media with subversive propaganda or propaganda in solidarity with imprisoned comrades. Actions and attacks against capitalism as an effective MEDIUM.
“But it is interesting to ask oneself if now, little by little we are learning from our past, little by little we are widening our dream of an Informal Anarchist Federation / International Revolutionary Front. If now our affinities in the Iberian Peninsula will also remain in the medium of anonymous crowds, or on the contrary will join the revolutionary effort.”Gabriel Pombo da Silva
In the Spanish state (may its flag burn!) we have experienced harsh periods of repression, since armed groups and resistance in the 70s and 90s were very forceful, the system and the state became especially repressive against any organized dissent and any insurgent cell. The prisons and the prison system are especially repressive and the conditions of the prisoners (and more so of political prisoners) are bad, very bad. Thus it is understandable that up to this moment actions have been anonymous. However, in the face of new political situations and new revolutionary processes, some have seen the necessity of forming part of a common project, of extending the revolutionary family through more horizons and raising their fists against the old dogmas, seeking new fronts and trying to operate as an antagonist cell. Gabriel Pombo da Silva (a salute to him) is right, from our own experiences we must continue searching, studying and acting to aggrandize our experience and the wounds against the new phases of capitalism each time more and more monopolistic. That is, to join the revolutionary effort. However, the FAI/IRF is an option for anyone who wants it, for anyone who wants to use that medium as a tool of struggle and how to approach other comrades who unfortunately live farther away.

“To defend oneself by saying that the political context in the place one lives is not adequate for the struggle, is just an excuse for not breaking the tranquility of the everyday.”
Silvia Guerini
It is easy to be a mere spectator of the social war from the computer screen, but just because it is easy does not mean it is valid. We believe that not everything depends on the context and the situation, like something external that floats in the air. Situations are made by us, by creating for ourselves, working hard and creating our own projects, being protagonists of the social war and having an active role, being the protagonists of our own reality and struggle. The ecological problems and what creates them–nanotechnology and biotechnology–not to combat them only, but exactly the contrary. It is necessary to create spaces of practice and counterpower for escaping from the established, but above all if these have a direct role against the state and the view it creates, a role destructive of the hypertechnological system. Ground work is indispensable, as is participation in social struggles and involving oneself in many causes, but always recognizing the root problem and seeking its total destruction. If we do not hurry in the creation of a consolidated and strong resistance, an active opposition, within a few years we will be obliged to give thanks to work entire days in the trenches until the age of 67. Thus, from now on we associate ourselves in the Informal Anarchist Federation and the revolutionary front as a way and contribution to expanding the federation and the development of the true revolutionary movement (either as part of the federation and the front, or in autonomous and anonymous groups).
“This is what has happened, what we have. If anything scares us it is the return to normality, because in the streets in the actions, the expropriations, etc, in our cities of light and death, we do not see only the consequences of our rage, but rather attempts to be able to live again. We have nothing to do but turn it into a living reality, to halt the field of everyday life, our power to materialize our desires, our power to not contemplate but rather transform the real–that is our vital space, everything else is dead.”
“Those who want to understand will understand, now is the moment to shatter our invisible cages and to transform our small and pathetic lives.”
We escape from the networks and structures of capital created by sociopaths, we escape from the substitution of the social networks that make us avoid ourselves for a better world in which we only speak with the wall, developing the cancer that presupposes [also entails, signifies – transl] appearances, and we do not want to appear [as in to seem, to feign – transl] but rather to attack. We unite with the insurgents. That it’s no use from the start, the critique of this–our actions and struggle–does not have a political expression, our struggle is our political expression.
Our struggle is the only thing we have. We are not for making a fool of anyone, we are precarious youth at war against domination.
To part with the appointed times: we consider that during and after an action or demonstration a series of things happen; first we gain–that is, we achieve the objective thereby concretely sabotaging the objective, and then we lose since we return to adhering to spectacular normality, we abandon the subversive role and we go on to exist within the networks again; thus and so far as it is possible, actions should go on extending themselves, perpetuating themselves and making themselves daily and habitual until–together with words, solidarity and every type of anarchist practice–they can create some subversive social fabrics and some strong bases of counterpower.
We did not want these words to just be dead words.
Coordinated actions:
Mailing of envelopes that simulated explosive letters:
On November 17th and 18th, two envelopes that simulated explosive letters we sent to the headquarters of the PSC and the PPC in Barcelona.[1] The same day of the 18th, notes were left at the door of both headquarters reading: “The domination, abuses, terror and control do not go unnoticed; expressions of rage will not be mere simulations next time. Death to capital and the politicians. Long live anarchy.”
Barcelona, November 20th, 2011:
In the late night to early hours of November 19th-20th, the locks of 15 polling stations were sealed, some cameras located in the same centers were obscured and attacked. Later, at 1:30am, the street was blockaded at Av. Meridiana and Ruben Dario (around #460), later at 2:15-2:30 the street was blockaded between Claramunt and Serós.

On November 20th, 12:30pm, Barcelona: bomb threat in the city of (in)justice.
On November 20th, 7:50pm, Badalona: bomb threat to the courthouse of Badalona.
On November 20th, no one votes, active abstention, They do not represent us!

Anti-authoritarian Insurgency of Action / Informal Anarchist Federation

For the comrades of other countries who don’t understand:

1. PPC and PSC are the Cataluña branches of the (un)Popular Party and the P$OE — parties that represent in the $tate the major political forces enacting and coordinating cuts and privatizations.
* Translation notes: The Spanish language, in addition to ‘anarchism’ and ‘anarchy,’ has a third related term–acracia–which can be translated as anarchy. It has the most apolitical connotation of the three, so we translate it here as ‘chaos.’ We generally translated its adjective form as ‘anarchic.’

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