ABSTRACT
The archives of the Casa Cuna foundling home in Cadiz trace the lives of many children defined as ‘mulato’, ‘pardo’ or ‘trigueno’. They were the children of freed slaves, predominantly illegitimate and born out of wedlock as a result of illicit liaisons, rape or short-term relationships. Children of shame, they were abandoned in order to hide the father’s sin, and perhaps, in the slave mother’s case, in the hope that this might secure them a better future.
