In the midst of the appealing process for two sentences in favour of the CNT-CIT, the legal conflict in the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist unions continues at the beginning of 2025.
Since 2010 it has been an ongoing conflict between some local CNT-CIT groups and CNT-AIT groups since the split in the Cordoba congress where CNT-CIT was created. There were two majors changes decided in the congress that affects the ongoing situation. One, the majority approved to create a Confederal Technical Cabinet, as a reinforcement of the legal action of the local unions. Second, to change the vote count for the unions, making it proportional to their membership, giving greater strength to the unions with more membership. Later on, the
CNT-CIT was formally expelled from the International Workers Association (IWA) in 2016 for ignoring its commitments to the IWA and for creating a parallel international organization.
In several occasions the different steps to get more members by the CNT-CIT have ended up in the courts, the last time was on 28th of November 2024. Despite international statements from the CIT and AIT international pleading for restorative processes to solve the conflict.
The CNT-CIT has decided to keep on using the Spanish state legal system to hoard more properties and the name of the anarcho-syndicalist union as its own, and CNT-AIT follows this in their defence strategies. In what it seems to be an open neoliberal battle in courts, the CNT-CIT is leading a struggle towards securing private property that includes premises and headquarters, to register CNT as a trademark and to get monetary compensations for supposed moral damages.
The last complaints presented in October 2024 and November 2024 by the CNT-CIT against 33 local CNT-AIT groups, included requirements for moral damages between €2.000 and €20.000 for each local group, the overtake of the local headquarters of CNT-AIT of the overmentioned local groups and a refusal against the CNT-AIT to use the acronym CNT. According to information from internal sources, on November 28th 2024 as the current last sentence in the National Audience, the judge denied the economic requirements for damages, but ruled in favor of CNT-CIT to get the local quarters and to deny the last 17 local CNT-AIT to be able to use CNT in their unions’ names anymore. Both sentences are appealed to the Constitutional courts by the CNT-AIT and is pending a final decision.
This means that the struggle between both unions that has been impacting their collaboration both nationally and internationally, is still not decided though both unions are openly using the state legal systems to convey this conflict against all anarchist traditions. At the same time, it is also unclear if all these legal processes focused on private and intellectual property will have any consequences for the international anarcho-syndicalist alliances.