A woman who received the devastating news that her twins died shortly after birth is now exploring the idea this was a cover-up.
Appearing in an episode of ITV‘s Long Lost Family, a woman named Ana explored the idea that she was one of many victims of the ‘Stolen Baby Scandal’ which gripped Spain for a number of decades.
What is Spain’s ‘Stolen Baby Scandal’?
During the country’s Francoist era, which lasted from 1936–1975, children of parents who were considered opponents to the regime or ‘unsuitable’ were forcibly taken and readopted into families who were approved by authorities.
It’s difficult to gauge how many children where forcibly taken during this time, which is believed to have continued as late as the 1990s, due to discrepancies in how births were registered at the time.
However, the reports from families who believe they were victims of the scandal all go through a similar process. They give birth to a healthy baby, only to be later told their child has passed away.
Funeral arrangements are taken care of by the hospital on behalf of the family, therefore limiting parents’ access to their newborns.
Long Lost Family ITV documentary and Ana’s story explained
One of the women who believes her children were stolen is 93-year-old Ana, who gave birth to twins at a Madrid hospital in 1958.
Already a mother-of-three, Ana hadn’t experienced any complications during her pregnancy and was informed by a nurse that she had delivered a girl and a boy. Hours later, the same nurse, who was also a nun, would visit Ana again to deliver the devastating news that her children had died.
Funeral arrangements would be taken care of by the hospital, meaning that Ana could return home.
For the following 50 years, Ana would believe her children had died at birth. However, once investigations into the ‘Lost children of Francoism’ begun, she knew something more serious could’ve happened on that fateful day.
“They lied about everything,” she told presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell (via Metro).
Children weren’t only taken for political reasons either, with Ana and her daughter Maria Elena speculating that it could’ve been due to financial instead.
“There is no record of the baby being buried, there is no record of the baby being baptised. Everything is lies and contradictions,” Maria added.
Another woman whose story is covered is Ruth Appleby, a British woman who gave birth to her first child in 1992. Ruth had travelled to the country as her then-boyfriend was teaching Spanish in the country.
After a ‘prolonged’ birth, Ruth and her partner Howard were sent home from the hospital without their daughter Rebecca – only to receive a phone call later informing them the infant had died.
Like Ana, the hospital offered to take care of funeral procedures.
“The hospital were putting a lot of pressure on both of us,” she recalled (via The Mirror).
Ruth later attempted to have her daughter brought over to the UK in 2010, discovering the remains buried in her grave were ‘impossible’ to be from a newborn baby.
“It was something from a nightmare. I realised everything that had happened there was completely wrong,” she recalled.
Long Lost Family is available to watch on ITV1 and ITVX
