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Behind Bárbara Lennie, her stardom and her charisma, there is a movie story. From a horror movie: the story of her family. Buenos Aires, December 29, 1976.

Alberto Lennie had agreed to meet his wife,

Silvia Labayru, in a bar in the center of the Argentine capital. Silvia does not appear and Alberto is clear why: she had been kidnapped. Now

The Call,

Leila Guerriero's latest book, rescues her story.

Argentina was governed by a military dictatorship

that had overthrown the fragile Government of Isabel Perón,

marked by the action of armed groups such as Montoneros, the Peronist left, and the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), who kidnapped, planted bombs and murdered. Once in power, the dictatorship decided that kidnapping and murdering with even more fury and intensity was the method to reorganize the country. And so, Argentina plunged into its darkest night.

In 2014, with democracy having been restored for more than two decades, Alberto Lennie, Bárbara Lennie's father, told a court in his country about the ordeal of those years: he talked about the kidnapping of his parents, the disappearance of his sister Cristina , of the torture of his sister Sandra and of his now ex-wife, Silvia, who gave birth at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA), a kidnapping and torture center during the dictatorship.

Silvia was the mother of a girl, Vera Cristina Lennie,

Bárbara's half-sister.

At the time of her kidnapping, Silvia was 21 years old and studying History at the University of Salvador, a private institution with a religious profile. Silvia and Alberto were part of the Peronist Youth, but for many at that time, that was not enough:

the attraction of Montoneros was very powerful.

And Silvia joined the armed group.

Three weeks after the kidnapping, Alberto Swe was in City Bell, a quiet town of houses and country houses located about 50 kilometers south of Buenos Aires. It was the early morning of January 18, 1977 and one of the fearsome task forces of the Armed Forces entered the house and took all the Lennies:

Santiago and his wife, Berta, and their children Alberto and Sandra, from 17 years.

The soldiers were looking for Cristina, the third of the couple's children, who they found four months later. They were looking for her because Cristina had been the partner of one of the main leaders of Montoneros. When she was intercepted in the center of Buenos Aires she took a cyanide pill to kill herself. They took her. Her body was never recovered.

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Cristina's story could have been different because Silvia had found out that they had located her and managed to get authorization to make a call abroad.

She contacted her in-laws, who had already been released,

but there was no way for them to find Cristina to prevent her. Cell phones did not exist.

Vera, Bárbara Lennie's sister, came into the world in an improvised birth on a table in a dirty room at the ESMA.

A fellow captive helped Silvia give birth.

The military gave her newborn to her paternal grandparents, the Lennies, to care for her. Silvia was still kidnapped. The story took another dramatic turn with the appearance of Alfredo Astiz, nicknamed the blond angel, because of his appearance, one of the most famous repressors of State terrorism of that time.

Astiz was one of the most perverse characters of those years, he forged Alberto's signature and registered Vera in the civil registry.

He also used Silvia, who he passed off as her sister,

to take her to meetings at the Santa Cruz Church and deceive the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, who in those months began looking for her children. Astiz posed as the brother of a missing person.

Flight to Spain

That was the context in which the Lennies lived, that of a lawless Argentina and where real death squads roamed. Alberto Lennie finally met his daughter Vera at an agreed meeting in Montevideo. Silvia was still kidnapped, but the military took her to Uruguay so that Alberto could meet the girl. Alberto's mother was also there, which allowed part of the family to meet briefly. Fearful of what could happen to him, Alberto Lennie took refuge in Spain.

Silvia would not be released until almost a year later,

in June 1978. Finally reunited, the three of them, Alberto, Silvia and Vera, went to live in the south of Spain.

Already settled in Spain, the separation of Alberto and Silvia would come, Alberto's new relationship with another woman and the birth in Madrid of Bárbara, who would end up spending the first six years of her life in Argentina.

She was an Argentina in the midst of a democratic spring

, very different from the one in which Vera was born. It was a happy country that had left the dictatorship behind. Barbara lived there between 1984 and 1990.

The court before which Alberto Lennie explained his story in 2014 - the year in which his daughter Bárbara won the Goya for best actress for

Magical girl

- offered him the opportunity to say a few last words. And Alberto wanted to talk about Vera, about that daughter born in such dramatic conditions:

"I didn't have to go through that hell that was the ESMA.

Vera is 37 years old, she is a cardiologist and practices in Scotland. She grew up with me. And I have to highlight the privilege of not being in the place of so many mothers and grandmothers, who today continue looking for their children and grandchildren.

In an interview with journalist Manuel Jabois, Bárbara Lennie said that her family's story is "a horror." And she added:

"I have to do something with all this

. "

No one could tell her that she is wrong.