It's sort of scary how at any given time half the people on THR are mulling over the same gun purchases I am. Get out of my head!
I'm still educating myself on the two rifles, but big points of what I'm hearing are: CETME's only like milsurp ammo, commercial .308 may or may not swell and jam in the fluted chamber, whereupon the extractor yanks the casehead off, and then you cycle another .308 into the ripped off casing, blah blah hell on earth. I'm not interested in doing that at all.
FAL builds that just randomly show up at the local hook & bullet may not have the requisite 7 crucial US made parts, which causes Federal Agents to come through the bedroom windows in the middle of the night, shoot your dog, fondle your wife, and steal your bible. I'm not into that either.
I guess basically, if you have time and a credit card, even if you get a turd with either one you can eventually get it running, but FALs seem to be a favorite for build it yourself types, and are apparently easier to deal with except for where the barrel meets the upper. Probably the CETME has more horror stories associated with it, and truly strange things can happen to it if you get a Century with a ground bolt, like negative headspace.
If you have a lot of time for internet research, you'll eventually discover that there is no retailer anywhere who dosen't have someone claiming that they're a bastard who pokes old ladies in the eye with a sharp stick, so it's hard to feel confident on this. Still, at the moment I'm leaning towards the Imbel FAL. If I knew a FFL who'd do reasonable transfers, I'd go Ohio Rapid Fire FAL, since they're the exception to the old lady/sharp stick thing.