Irregular adoptions and infrastructures of memory in Spain: remnant practices from the Franco Regime

Abstract

The irregular adoption of displaced children during the Spanish Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, and the early years of Spanish democracy remains silent and unrecognised. The difficulty in recognising these irregular practices is linked to remnant infrastructures of memory ( Rubin, 2018 ). We propose that the time to speak openly about irregular adoptions of forcibly disappeared children in Spain is arriving, and doing so could be a way of exposing a series of “unknown knowns” ( Simmel, 1906 ; Bellman, 1981 ; Taussig, 1999 ).