Research on stolen babies
This section brings together documentation, research and critical archive work on stolen babies, identity theft, erasure of origins, filiation, irregular adoptions and public memory in Spain.
Within this general framework, two works linked to the María Madre Association of Bilbao are presented here: the documentary report on the institution and the report on AdoptadosBilbao.Blogspot.com, a historic blog by victims and relatives connected to this network.
The two documents complement each other: the IAMM report reconstructs the institutional structure of María Madre; the AdoptadosBilbao report reconstructs the digital memory of victims, their searches, testimonies and public complaints.
Line of research
This line of work documents a specific network of identity theft and irregular adoptions linked to Bilbao, with particular attention to the María Madre Association, its institutional connections, its documentary practices and the public memory generated by victims.
The research combines registry sources, administrative documents, digital archives, public testimonies and historical reconstruction. Its aim is to preserve a memory that for decades was fragmented, hidden or displaced into the private sphere.
In this framework, the abduction of newborns is not treated as an isolated event, but as a practice of institutional violence, destruction of origin and documentary substitution of filiation.
Main reports
The two published reports form a joint documentary block. The first reconstructs the institution involved; the second preserves and analyses the digital memory of those who searched, denounced and left public testimony of the network.
IAMM – Report on the María Madre Association of Bilbao
Documentary, historical and legal report on the María Madre Association of Bilbao: its foundation, structure, Church-State cover, registered activity and role in the network of newborn abduction and irregular adoptions.
Available on Zenodo:
Report · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17352586
Documentary annexes · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17386318
AdoptadosBilbao: digital memory of stolen-baby victims
Report and contextual archive of the blog created by Carmen, GotasDeLluvia, as an early space of denunciation, search and collective memory for victims and relatives linked to María Madre and irregular adoptions in Bilbao.
Available on Zenodo:
Report · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17363915
Digital annexes · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17387424
What this line documents
This section documents the institutional and memorial dimension of a stolen-babies network: on the one hand, the entities, documents, records and institutional covers that made the abduction possible; on the other, the digital memory of those who searched for their origin, publicly denounced what had happened and tried to reconstruct destroyed bonds.
The common axis is identity theft. These are not merely irregular adoptions, but lives registered under names, filiations and documents that concealed or substituted their real origin.
For that reason, these reports belong to the same critical archive as the rest of the work: memory, filiation, identity, documentary truth and restitution.
Recommended reading order
The recommended reading order is:
- IAMM – Report on the María Madre Association of Bilbao, because it reconstructs the institutional, registry and historical structure of the entity.
- AdoptadosBilbao: digital memory of stolen-baby victims, because it preserves and contextualises the public memory of victims, relatives and searches linked to that network.
Read together, the two documents make it possible to move from the institutional structure to the memory of the victims: from the machinery that produced the abduction to the voices that tried to undo it.