FELS is a scientific institution that brings together semiotics associations and researchers from different Latin American countries, Portugal, Spain, France and Italy. It was founded on October 7, 1987, in the city of Rosario, Argentina, during the II Latin American Semiotics Congress, held at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. From the outset, the presence of the aforementioned European countries was justified by the linguistic and educational ties of many of the researchers in the field.

In addition to the congresses, FELS maintains an active website-platform that houses the main research in the region, three international scientific journals: Cruzeiro Semiótico, DeSignis and Signo Invisible. It regularly publishes the Boletín FELS, an information tool on events, publications, scholarship programs and news from the field that is of interest to researchers in the region and around the world. FELS' scientific director is Professor Neyla Pardo of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, who has also served as FELS president.