Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI)

The Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) is identified in the novel as an anarchist organization associated with Javier Fumero’s early career. Its significance in the evidence lies chiefly in Fermín’s account of Fumero’s shifting political affiliations: the organization is the first of several factions Fumero serves, making it part of a history that exposes how political violence and opportunism survive changes in power.

Fumero’s Early Association

Years later, Fermín tells Daniel that the first time he heard of Fumero, Fumero was working as a gunman for the anarchist syndicate, the FAI. Fermín describes him as already notorious for acting without fear or scruple and for killing people on the basis of a name. This is a recollection about Fumero’s conduct, not a broader account of the organization’s membership, program, or internal structure.

A Sequence of Changing Allegiances

Fermín places Fumero’s service to the FAI at the start of a progression: Fumero later worked for the communists and then for the fascists. In Fermín’s telling, political causes mattered less to him than advancement. He spied, passed information between factions, and took money from them. The sequence makes the FAI one point in a changing political landscape, while presenting Fumero himself as a constant across its shifts: his allegiance changes, but his willingness to use violence and intelligence-gathering for personal gain does not.

Fermín’s Position and the Organization’s Narrative Role

At the time he watched Fumero, Fermín says, he was working for the Generalitat. He describes his wartime work as espionage and says that monitoring figures like Fumero was part of the job. After Barcelona fell, the balance of power reversed: Fermín became a persecuted fugitive, while Fumero was in charge of the purge. This reversal supplies the FAI reference with its historical context without establishing that Fermín or Fumero represented the organization’s wider membership or policy.

The novel thus uses the FAI chiefly as the first named affiliation in Fermín’s account of Fumero’s political opportunism. It anchors the inspector’s past in wartime factional conflict, while the later pursuit of Fermín and Fumero’s continuing use of threats connect that past to the coercive police power of the postwar period.