I am going to speak about resilience: Resilience against adoption
I am going to speak about resilience is a testimonial text by Olmo Gómez Aldaz prepared for the open panel "Different voices", within the conference "Paths of Resilience", XV Anniversary of La Voz de los Adoptados, held on 20 June 2026 at the Ministry of Youth and Children, Madrid.
The text presents resilience as resistance against adoption. It speaks from a failed adoption, from the recovery of birth identity, from judicially recognised dual filiation and from a critical and abolitionist position against adoption.
The intervention links personal experience, stolen babies, democratic memory, Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person, identity harm, restitution of filiation and the abolition of adoption.
Quick access
The publication is available on Zenodo as Spanish version 1.0, with its own DOI. A local PDF copy is also preserved within gomezaldaz.com.
Related
This page belongs to the Testimonies section, dedicated to texts in which Olmo Gómez Aldaz speaks from lived experience.
I am going to speak about resilience is integrated into the main lines of the work: the abolitionist critique of adoption, research on stolen babies, judicial restitution of biological filiation and democratic memory.
On this page
- What this testimony is
- Resilience against adoption
- A failed adoption
- Birth identity and dual filiation
- Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person
- Stolen babies and democratic memory
- Abolition of adoption
- Key concepts
- Documentary structure of the text
- Publication, versions and records
- Access to the publication
- Recommended citation
What this testimony is
I am going to speak about resilience is a testimonial intervention prepared for a public space of adopted voices. Its starting point is the experience of an adopted person who recovered his birth identity, established his biological filiation and placed that recovery within a structural critique of adoption.
The text presents resilience as an exit from the adoptive narrative. Testimonial speech orders an experience, sets out a public position and leaves a documentary record of a life marked by identity substitution.
The intervention starts from a central fact: the harm was within adoption. For that reason, resilience appears as recovery of origin, defence of filiation, reconstruction of birth identity and resistance against the structure that had replaced that identity.
Resilience against adoption
The axis of the text is the expression resilience against adoption. The formulation displaces the usual narrative that presents adoption as reparation, opportunity or a new beginning.
From this perspective, resilience consists of leaving an imposed identity, recovering origin, sustaining biographical truth and defending birth filiation against documents, narratives and structures that had erased it.
Resilience thus appears as a form of restitution. To restitute means to bring name, origin, filiation, memory and truth back together. It also means assuming the cost of confronting a legal fiction that organised an entire life for decades.
In the text, resilience is a concrete struggle to recover what was one's own.
A failed adoption
The testimony speaks from a failed adoption and turns that experience into a starting point for looking at adoption through its real consequences.
Adoption appears as a structure capable of erasing origin, replacing identity, manufacturing belonging and organising a life around a documentary fiction. Within that fiction, the adopted person may live for decades without yet having reached their birth identity.
The text names that situation as an adoptive fog: an apparently normal life built upon an identity that obeyed a legal substitution.
Speaking from a failed adoption makes it possible to question the social narrative that turns the adopted person harmed by adoption into a problem, ungrateful, conflictive or unable to recognise what they supposedly received.
Birth identity and dual filiation
The recovery of birth identity occupies a central place in the text. It involves recovering a replaced reality: origin, father, mother, sister, surnames, genealogy and filiation.
In the trajectory of Olmo Gómez Aldaz, that recovery took place through DNA, personal research and legal proceedings. Birth identity ceased to be a private search and became a legally recognised reality.
The text is linked to a singular situation: biological filiation recognised with full effects while adoption continues to exist. That dual filiation shows the tension between an imposed adoptive identity and a recovered, established and recognised birth identity.
From there, the testimony places resilience as the defence of a truth: this is my natural identity, this is my story, these were my parents and these are my surnames.
Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person
The text introduces a critique of Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person: the emotional, symbolic and narrative dependency that can bind an adopted person to the structure that replaced their identity.
That dependency affects the entire narrative of life. Adoption can produce belonging, recognition and apparent stability, while demanding the erasure of origin and the defence of a manufactured identity.
Leaving the adoptive narrative means breaking that dependency. It means looking at adoption as a structure of harm, even when for years it was lived as explanation, belonging or normality.
In the testimony, leaving that adoptive fog appears as one of the central acts of resilience: to stop living inside an identity imposed over birth identity.
Stolen babies and democratic memory
The testimony places personal experience within a historical framework of stolen babies, identity abduction, irregular adoptions and democratic memory.
In that framework, adoption appears as a structure capable of registering a false identity, concealing birth filiation and turning the disappearance of origin into a legally normalised situation.
Recognition as a victim within the framework of democratic memory connects the individual experience with a wider historical violence. The testimony then functions as personal memory and as a piece of a public archive on identity abduction in Spain.
The phrase "I was trafficked" names a reality of separation, transfer, adoption and identity substitution.
Abolition of adoption
The conclusion of the text is abolitionist. Adoption is presented as an institution structurally linked to identity substitution, erasure of origin and the manufacture of family fictions.
The testimony defends forms of protection, care and guardianship that guarantee stability without erasing identity, without replacing filiation and without forcing a child to stop being who they are in order to be cared for or recognised.
The alternative proposed is a reformed, strong permanent guardianship, with real rights, stability, material protection and sufficient legal guarantees. The centre is building forms of care that protect without erasing.
Abolition thus appears as a consequence of lived experience and of the critical elaboration of that experience: a response to an institution that can erase identity, replace filiation and impose belonging.
Key concepts
Resilience against adoption: exit from the adoptive narrative, recovery of birth identity and defence of the truth of origin.
Failed adoption: experience in which adoption produces harm, identity substitution and a life organised around a documentary fiction.
Birth identity: reality made up of origin, filiation, genealogy, name, surnames, family history and biographical truth.
Dual filiation: situation in which judicially recognised biological filiation coexists with adoption still in force.
Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person: emotional, symbolic and narrative dependency on the structure that replaced birth identity.
Abolition of adoption: proposal to replace adoption with forms of care, protection and guardianship that guarantee stability without erasing identity or manufacturing filiations.
Documentary structure of the text
The document is presented as a testimony / prepared intervention. It includes an editorial note, a documentary record and the full text of the intervention.
The documentary record identifies author, title, subtitle, document type, event, panel, date, place, DOI, version and Zenodo community.
The body of the text develops a first-person testimonial intervention. The structure moves from the critique of the usual narrative on adoption and resilience to the recovery of origin, dual filiation, adoptive harm, Stockholm syndrome of the adopted person, democratic memory and the abolition of adoption.
This structure makes it possible to read the document as a testimonial piece and, at the same time, as part of the public archive of a wider work on identity, filiation, adoption, stolen babies, memory and restitution.
Publication, versions and records
Author: Olmo Gómez Aldaz
Title: I am going to speak about resilience
Subtitle: Resilience against adoption
Document type: Testimony / prepared intervention
Event: "Paths of Resilience" Conference · XV Anniversary of La Voz de los Adoptados
Panel: Open panel "Different voices"
Date and place: 20 June 2026 · Ministry of Youth and Children, Madrid
Spanish version: 1.0 · DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20773484
English version: pending translation
Zenodo community: Testimonies of Olmo Gómez Aldaz
Academia.edu: also available as a publication on Academia.edu.
Event page: "Paths of Resilience" Conference
Access to the publication
The document can be consulted on Zenodo through its general DOI and can also be downloaded from the local copy hosted on gomezaldaz.com.
Recommended citation
Gómez Aldaz, Olmo. I am going to speak about resilience: Resilience against adoption. Text prepared for the open panel "Different voices", "Paths of Resilience" Conference, XV Anniversary of La Voz de los Adoptados, Ministry of Youth and Children, Madrid, 20 June 2026. Zenodo. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20773484.