No punishment in Spain’s first ‘stolen babies’ trial
A Spanish court found an 85year-old former doctor guilty on Monday of taking a newborn away from her mother under the Franco dictatorship but refrained from convicting him.
In the first trial of the socalled “stolen babies” scandal, the Madrid court ruled that the deed was committed too long ago for the defendant to be legally convicted.
It found former gynaecologist Eduardo Vela guilty of taking Ines Madrigal, now 49, away from her mother as a newborn in 1969.
During and after the 19391975 dictatorship, thousands of babies were taken away from their mothers, who were told they had died after birth.
The babies were adopted by infertile couples, preferably close to the far-right regime, often with the help of the Catholic Church.
Vela, who used to run a clinic, was the first to stand trial for alleged involvement in the baby trafficking. Prosecutors wanted him jailed for 11 years.
He was accused of taking Madrigal from her biological mother and giving her to a woman who was falsely certified as her birth mother.
Madrigal hopes her case will help open “thousands of cases that are closed”. She said in September at the end of the hearings: “In this country, a person who played God ... cannot remain unpunished.”
The baby-stealing practice began after Franco came to power following the 1936-39 civil war. Initially, newborns were taken from left-wing opponents of the regime. Later, the practice was expanded to supposedly illegitimate babies and those from poor families.
Perpetrators wanted the children to be raised by affluent, conservative and devout Roman Catholic families.
Even after Spain’s transition to democracy following Franco’s death in 1975, the illegal trafficking went on to at least 1987.
Campaigners estimate tens of thousands of babies may have been stolen from their parents over the decades.
Vila was accused of falsifying documents, illegal adoption, unlawful detention and certifying a nonexistent birth. During the trial, he said he could not remember details about the operation of the clinic, which he ran for 20 years up to 1982.
A policeman who probed the case and testified in court said the clinic was a centre for baby trafficking.