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er ad ts, 41, ny, to walk her down the aisle. She says: “I walked myself. I was thinking about Dad and then suddenly two big rainbows appeared. I took it as a sign he was thinking about me on my special day.
“I always felt he loved me and that’s how I dealt with it on the day.”
Miriam’s father had been hard to trace – two years after she was born, civil war had broken out in El Salvador and many people had fled the country.
“I’d look at websites and tried to translate some Spanish,” she says. “There were lots of Victor Aragons and I didn’t know if he was even still there.” So Miriam called Long Lost Family, which managed to track her father down in America, where he has lived for more than 25 years, working as a painter and decorator.
Victor, who had married and had five more children, was flown thousands of miles to meet his daughter.
Speaking about their reunion in a beachside cafe, Miriam says: “As soon as I saw my dad sitting there, I knew it was him. He looked so warm and engaging. He gave me a big smile. It was incredible. Both of us had wanted it so much. I told him about how I’d changed my surname and he almost cried. He was so happy.”
And Victor tells Miriam at their first meeting: “Since you were born, you were in my mind every day. My little girl, it’s wonderful to have you.”
Taking up the tale in his broken English, Victor describes how he met Veronica on her first night of the mission at the convent in the municipality of Gotera in El Salvador.
Victor says: “As well as being a musician, I was working in the convent, painting the walls and cutting grass. When I saw her for the first time I said to myself, ‘Oh she is beautiful.’”
He adds with a smile: “When I was by her side I felt like I was in heaven. We couldn’t show our love to anybody. She was a nun. But the first time I kissed her... after that we could not stop. That’s the story of our love.”
Veronica – then 38 – later confided in him that she suspected she could be pregnant and she went to the city to take a pregnancy test.
Victor, who was just 23 at the time, says: “In my small town, if she goes to the hospital people would know what was going on and she is a nun. That’s why it had to be kept a secret.
“She told me the night before if the test was positive she would have to go back to England and never come back to my town and that’s what happened. She never came back.
“It was hard for me. I felt very bad. I wanted to go over there but it wasn’t possible for me. I was poor. Nobody helped me. I couldn’t be with my daughter and see her grow.”
Miriam says she now understands the difficult decision her mother made. She says: “I was a nun’s baby and born out of wedlock. It was a double taboo. She had to leave her friends and cut all ties.”
Veronica didn’t return to her home in Ireland, but instead moved to Manchester then Wales and, unable to return to the Church, she got a job as a teacher to support her and her daughter.
Miriam says: “It’s something that she keeps private to herself and that we don’t talk about much.
“She’s so happy she had me but it was really hard for her. To keep me and not have me adopted, as well as facing head-on some people pointing the finger at me, I feel blessed.
“She does feel an awful lot of guilt about what happened. But she fell in love. She’s got to be able to forgive herself about that at some point and I hope this will help her to do that. It was a genuine forbidden love story and for me to be part of that, I feel privileged.”
Thousands of miles away, a heartbroken Victor longed to meet his daughter.
He says: “The other sisters at the convent showed me a picture of the baby her mother had sent them. I asked them if I could keep it but they told me no. They said, ‘When you want to see it you can ask me.’ “They wanted to keep it a secret.” Miriam says: “It must have broken my dad’s heart because it’s almost worse than not seeing a picture as he wasn’t able to keep it. It’s an awful shame. It was the 1970s and I think the Catholic Church was very traditional.
“They just wanted the problem to go away. They didn’t want anything coming back because it would have ruined the mission there and given them a bad name. They wanted to keep it under wraps.”
And it stayed that way until Miriam was a 19-year-old student and her mum finally broke her silence and told her about her extraordinary beginnings.
After their first meeting, Victor spent a few days with his daughter and also met her husband and her boys. “The boys love him and he told them to call him Papi,” Miriam says. “They keep asking when Papi’s coming back.”
Veronica chose not to take part in the show but gave Miriam her blessing to look for her dad. Miriam says her parents haven’t been in contact yet. She says: “I think this is about me and my relationship with my dad.
“I’m completely open with my mum and she knows I’ve met my dad.”
Miriam is planning to save up so she can go to America to visit her father and to get to know her five half-siblings. “My half-sister Beatritz was so excited when she called me as she’s grown up with four boys, so she’s looking forward to doing girlie things like shopping.”
But for now Victor and Miriam have to make do with speaking to each other on the phone. “We message each other on WhatsApp every day,” Miriam says. “He’s asking me now for photos of me as a child growing so he can catch up on all those lost memories. “And this time, he can keep them all.” Miriam and Victor’s story is on Long Lost Family tonight at 9pm, on ITV1
When I was by her side I felt like I was in heaven. We could not show our love to anybody. She was a nun...
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