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Inés Madrigal, the first Spanish woman to bring the "stolen babies" case to court, has just found her biological family, thanks to a DNA test.
Inés Madrigal is a happy woman. After 32 years of research strewn with countless pitfalls, the 50-year-old Spanish woman has finally found her blood family thanks to an American company of DNA tests: cousins, an aunt and four brothers. Her biological mother died in 2013 at the age of 73.
In Spain, Inés Madrigal is an emblematic person in the scandal of stolen babies. The associations estimate that about 300 000 babies were stolen at birth between 1940 and 1990, and especially before 1975, that is to say during the Franco dictatorship. The theft of children would initially have targeted political dissidents and then, often with the complicity of the Catholic Church, babies born out of wedlock or large families.
►Also read - Spain: opening of the first trial of Franco's stolen babies
Thousands of complaints have failed, often because of prescription. Inés Madrigal had been the first to get justice to decide her case . In 2018, a Madrid court found that an ex-obstetrician, Dr. Eduardo Vela, stole it from his mother when she was born in 1969 to another woman, her adoptive mother.
In reality, her half-brothers and aunt told her that she had not been stolen, but voluntarily given for adoption. " This does not mean that Dr. Vela is not guilty of many crimes, " responded Ines Madrigal. According to the victims' associations, the trafficking of babies would have continued even after the return of democracy, at least until 1987, this time simply for greed.
(With AFP)