Infrastructures, Power, and Filiation: Genetic Information and the Quest for the “stolen babies” of Spain

This chapter explores the role of genetics in reuniting adoptees and biological families who cannot find their filiations in the Spanish registration records. The uncertainty of their ancestry searches is compounded by numerous reports of infants given in adoption without the full, free consent of their biological mothers during the dictatorship of General Franco and into the first decades of democracy in Spain (late 1930s to early 2000s). Building on Star and Bowker’s concept of infrastructure, I follow the eugenic discourse that justified these adoption practices, arguing that its contempt for progressive social values and single motherhood crystallised in a socio-technical assemblage that survived cultural and political change. The advent of genomics underpins a new infrastructure that has been deployed to counter the child removal practices. A central databank to which the affected communities can submit their genetic profiles was established in 2012. I contend that for the retrieval of their identity to be complete, however, any potential match in their DNA sequences needs to be interpreted alongside the experiential knowledge of the affected individuals. Genetic technoscience needs to give away some of its authority and power to those who were denied a voice in deciding on the parenthood of their children.