The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain

Abstract

The Age of Mass Child Removal in Spain analyses the ideas and practices that underpinned the age of mass child removal. This era emerged from growing criticisms across the world of ‘dangerous’ parents and the developing belief in the nineteenth century that the state could provide superior guardianship to ‘unfit’ parents. In the late nineteenth century, the juvenile-court movement led the way in forging a new and more efficient system of child removal that severely curtailed the previously highly protected sovereignty of guardians deemed dangerous. Spaniards formed a significant part of this transnational movement and the country’s juvenile courts became involved in the three main areas of removal that characterize the age: the taking of children from poor families, from families displaced by war, and from political opponents. The study of Spanish case files reveals much about how the removal process worked in practice across time and across democratic regimes and dictatorships.