In this paper we analyze the emotionality linked to the medical technology of organ transplants during the 1980s in Spain. Using the newspapers ABC, El Pais, and other visual materials, we explore the individual feelings expressed in the media by donors and receptors. More importantly, we expose the «emotionology» that emphasized solidarity as a source of national cohesion and democratic modernity. Our paper contributes to an understanding of the cultural acceptance of this technology as a semiotic-material process, and also to an exploration of the history of the political transition as a trajectory loaded with emotional aspirations.