Center for European Studies

CES Lunchtime Symposium Speaker Series
Martin Sorbille, Spanish & Portuguese Studies, UF
Keene-Flint 101

The military dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain (1939-1975) carried out a systemic plan to “legally” abduct the babies and young children of executed Republican parents. Based on an esoteric mixture of eugenics, anti-communism, and conservative Catholicism, the objective was to remove the Marxist gene from the biology and psyche of the “red” children. Children were given new names, sent to orphanages administered by Catholic-Government institutions and/or awarded to Francoist families. It is estimated that during the first fifteen years, forty thousand children were victims of this macabre plot.

The current Spanish legislation makes it very difficult for the Spanish Judiciary to investigate the abductions of children and other human rights violations. Additionally, popular culture in general has not adequately represented the horrors of the Franco years. Only in the last two decades, different art forms began to fictionalize the lives of the abductees. For instance, various films portray how the orphaned red children become ghosts, monsters, and even Francoist agents with uncanny traits as a result of eugenic experimentation.

This symposium talk will center on the history and film representation of the Republican children abducted during the first period of Francoism.