The scandal of Spain's baby market.

Summary of story from Al Jazeera, August 4, 2011

Imagine the grief a mother must feel when she is told that her baby has died in childbirth. Then imagine what it must be like to discover, many years later, that the child had not died at all, but was secretly spirited away and given to someone else.

That is what happened in Spain during the 40-year dictatorship of General Franco. Spanish authorities are now investigating astonishing allegations that for over four decades government officials sanctioned the abduction of thousands of babies (see WVoN story).

It appears that the thefts usually happened in maternity clinics and nursing homes, with the active collusion of doctors, nurses and even nuns, and that state officials and civil servants then helped with the cover up.

Once the babies had been taken – often from women who were known political opponents of Franco or relatives of those who had fought against him during the country’s civil war in the 1930s – they were then sold or given to childless parents among the regime’s supporters.

Braulia Banderas Franco, from Valencia, has good reason to believe her baby did not die as she was told.
When she eventually retrieved the birth certificate she found that her husband’s signature had been forged on the document and that the name and location of the clinic where she gave birth had been falsified:
“The names of the doctors are false. Everything is forged. It says that my baby died at midday, and that’s not true. Everything is a lie.”

Understandably the victims wanted the perpetrators brought to justice.

http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/08/the-scandal-of-spains-baby-market/

More here..
http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/03/spains-stolen-babies/