Resisting Absence in Adoption, Before and After

Many persons disappeared during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the subsequent Franco dictatorship (through 1975). Unlike the adults who have been and are being exhumed from mass graves, whose existence and absence were almost always known to someone, the severing of kin ties through child abduction resulted in a double absence. While their parents believed for decades that they had died, an unknown number of such children are today living adults unaware of their own histories. This double absence of knowledge makes it more challenging to fill the double absence, which this article analyzes through the narratives of a father, a brother, and a sister who are currently searching their absent relatives in Spain.