[International adoption has matured].

International adoption is a social phenomenon that reached Spain in the late 1990s and peaked in the 2000s, ranking the country second in the world in the number of adoptions, only after the United States of America. At present, this trend has slowed down due to economic, bureaucratic or political circumstances. Now that the years have passed, we are able to observe the reality of adoption, or rather, of adopted children, thanks to the perspective given by the passing of time and a more settled situation. And I would like to speak from personal experience. I work as a primary care paediatrician in a small city in Castile and León in the northwest of Spain. When children from international adoptions started to arrive, I was faced with a situation that was new to me. On one hand, there were children from regions of the world at a higher risk of health problems due to various factors: some were related to the conditions in their countries of origin (poverty, insalubrity, etc.); others, related to the situation of the child prior to being abandoned (preand perinatal care, malnutrition, abuse); and finally, some pertained to their time in institutions (in which both the facilities and the care are usually inadequate). On the other hand, they were generally accompanied by mature and knowledgeable adults who had become parents after a long personal quest often rife with obstacles and difficulties. In some cases, I was already