Niños robados

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As Niños robados ( span. Abducted children ) or Niños perdidos (Span. Lost children ) are in Spain called newborns during the Franco dictatorship (1936 until 1975) by a national re-education program zwangsadoptiert (first phase, about 1,940 to 1,955) or were subsequently separated from their birth parents or mothers through illegal adoptions (second phase, until 2001), often without their knowledge.

history

First phase: forced adoptions by the state

In the post-war period of the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) and into the 1950s, a state re-education program was implemented based on the theses of a psychiatrist, according to which Republican women had an innate tendency to perversion, which would break out when they became democratically active , which is why the state must take away their children. As a result, it was started to take away their children, infants and toddlers from women prisoners, especially Republicans, because “their harmful ideas” were unsuitable for upbringing, but also from communists and anarchists and then put them into church care, e. B. in orphanages, where they grew up or were referred to families or childless couples who were closer to the regime. They have often been told that the babies are the children of prostitutes who have had no prospects. The children were usually given to parents who were loyal to the regime at the age of three.

In 1944, more than 12,000 Republican children were interned in convent schools or seminaries; in 1954 over 30,000. Their names have been changed. Many of these were orphans whose parents had perished in the civil war, or children whose parents were in exile, were considered to have "disappeared" or had ended up in German concentration camps. Republican parents or mothers had their child or children taken away when they entered prison and then distributed to Madrid or other parts of the country. There were precise instructions on how children who had been sent by their parents with the Red Cross to France, Belgium or Holland to save them from the atrocities of the civil war should be "brought back" and then "re-Catholicized".

The Roman Catholic Church not only turned a blind eye or two, but also gave the dictatorship legitimacy in the form of national Catholicism and, in return, benefited from privileges and profits from child trafficking.

Over 30,000 children - infants and toddlers - are said to have been victims of these forced adoptions.

Second phase: illegal adoptions

Even after the re-education program, there were niños robados. A criminal network of gynecologists, priests, the Roman Catholic Church in Spain, judges, notaries and officials is held responsible for the robbery of tens of thousands of children. They sold the children for sometimes high “fees” (from 200,000 pesetas (in 1982) to 750,000 (1982) and in one case at the end of the 1960s for 1,000,000), which were in reality the price for the child , with forged papers, birth certificates. The children often went to childless couples or couples from abroad. The birth parents were often faked the death of the newborn child - in 1979 the infant mortality rate was more than 9 per 1000 live births -, death in an incubator was named as the cause of death, a burial had already taken place or claims that the hospital would “take care of everything” . In the San Ramón private clinic in Madrid, the mothers were even shown a dead baby from a freezer "as evidence". It was always the same body.

To consider this second phase after the state education program purely for criminal and financial reasons would be too short-sighted, because at the time of the Franco dictatorship, childless couples were viewed poorly in society and unmarried women with children (they were referred to as "fallen girls") defamed) or mothers of illegitimate children - abortions were prohibited -, there was considerable pressure to put this child up for adoption or the child was taken away from them. In newspaper advertisements, single pregnant women were offered accommodation in church-run pensions or the possibility of giving birth free of charge. Parents who were considered “politically unreliable” because they were B. sympathized with forbidden left groups, or poor, destitute people were victims of illegal adoptions.

Anyone who publicly contradicted and / or criticized or accused church and state during this time had to expect repression.

The lucrative trade in illegally adopted children was not uncommon until the 1980s. A change in adoption law in 1987 was intended to put a stop to the illegal trade - but child robbery continued into the 1990s and 2001. Estimates of the number of niños robados vary greatly, as many are silent or have died and those affected do not know that they were “stolen” from their mother or that the receiving families have taken in an illegally adopted child.

Estimates assume a total of up to 300,000 victims.

Work-up

The Niños robados were first reported in the early 2000s. For years, the authorities and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain barely cooperated and refrained from solving the cases.

The United Nations and the European Union have repeatedly called on Spain to come to terms with this “dark chapter in Spanish history”. However, the processing of genuinely political crimes during the Franco dictatorship is slowed down or made almost impossible by the amnesty law of 1977, two years after the death of Francisco Franco, with which victims and perpetrators were relieved of their legal responsibility for political crimes ,. This attempted to make the transition, the so-called Transición , from Franquism to a parliamentary monarchy of the western model, peacefully, as it was feared that a legal coming to terms with the past would destabilize the country.

In order to still be able to bring charges, an attempt is made to prove continuities under the Amnesty Act of 1977, which is difficult because there are differences between the forced adoptions of the early Franco dictatorship (first phase) and the illegal adoption practices (second phase). Proving evidence is also difficult: the victims often have little more than a few pieces of evidence in their hands; authorities, churches or clinics refuse to provide information or make it more difficult. Important people have often died and files or birth certificates that are burned twenty years after birth are missing - only official inquiries by the judiciary could clarify this.

The internationally known investigative judge at the National Court of Justice , the Audiencia Nacional de España , Baltasar Garzón , was the first judge in Spain who dared to investigate the crimes of the Franco dictatorship: he opened a case in September 2008 for crimes against humanity that do not expire or or fall under an amnesty against numerous high decision-makers of the Franco regime (including General Francisco Franco himself). A large and controversial media response found in particular his order to open 19 mass graves from the early phase of Franquism, including that of the poet Federico García Lorca, all over the country . The aim was to investigate the death circumstances of numerous people who disappeared during the dictatorship and the kidnapping and disappearance of children of left-wing parents. However, the procedure was stopped by the plenum of the Audiencia Nacional de España in a majority decision; The members of the Supreme Court are selected based on party affiliation. In 2009, Garzón was sued by three ultra-right organizations for perversion of the law - the Supreme Court did not dismiss the suit: "He defied the democratically passed amnesty law of 1977 and wanted to disturb social peace in the country." In 2012 Garzón was removed from office and with an eleven-year professional ban. Thousands took to the streets across Spain against the verdict. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch described the process as "scandalous": "It is not acceptable that a judge is punished for wanting to solve human rights crimes."

The nun María Gómez Valbuena from the Cooperative of the Daughters of Christian Love of St. Vincent de Paul , who was accused and acquitted in March 1982 of the illegal arrest and falsification of documentation, was charged again in 2012: She is supposed to work for the Madrid private clinic San Ramón, as a right Hand of the clinic director Eduardo Vela, who organized the distribution of the expectant mothers to different apartments in more than 1,000 cases. When questioned by the prosecutor, she stated that she had acted according to the laws of her faith. She died of a heart attack on January 22, 2013 at the age of 87 before the main proceedings were opened.

As a result of the investigation into Sister Valbuena in 1982, the gynecologist Eduardo Vela from the San Ramón private clinic in Madrid was suspected of trafficking in babies; Vela was the head of the clinic from 1961 to 1981. He had kept a precise record of the births in his clinic, all names and dates of the last few years were correctly noted in a notebook - however, the police refrained from having this notebook shown in the course of their investigations. Vela had amassed an astonishingly large fortune with which he financed a concrete plant, among other things. The San Ramón Private Clinic in Madrid closed in February 1982 after nearly 30 years of trafficking in babies. Vela was not banned from working and was able to continue working in his own practice undisturbed.

In October 2018, Vela was finally found guilty of stealing at least three newborns from their mothers in 1969, handing them over to childless married couples, destroying files and forging birth certificates. He denied the allegations and testified that the mothers were in need. A prison sentence was waived because of the statute of limitations of the offenses and because of the age of the defendants of 85 years for the sentencing - the public prosecutor demanded a prison sentence of 11 years.

As of October 2018, there were around 2,000 reports suspected of abusive, illegal child adoption in Spanish courts.

Quotes

“People came and looked at the babies as if they were buying horses. [...] The pregnant woman goes in through one door and the adoptive mother goes out the other door with the baby. "

- Sister María Gómez Valbuena : [1] [2]

“Between 1960 and 1990, two million children were officially adopted in Spain. Our experience shows that the proportion of illegal adoptions is 10 to 15 percent. We have extrapolated this value "

- David Serra Lázaro, lawyer : [3]

"Spanish society was never brought up to look into the past and come to terms with the whole thing."

- Margot Litten, author and documentary filmmaker : [4]

literature

  • R. Vinyes, M. Armengou, R. Bellis: Los Ninos Perdidos Del Franquismo . Debolsillo, ISBN 978-84-9759-908-5 , pp. 314 (Spanish).
  • Montse Armengou, Ricard Belis i Garcia: Los internados del miedo . 1st edition. Now Books, 21, ISBN 978-84-16245-28-4 , pp. 312 (Spanish).

Film adaptations

  • 2002: Els nens perduts del franquisme ( Los niños perdidos del franquismo ), TV series
  • 2017: Franco's legacy - Spain's stolen children , film
  • 2018: El silencio de otros , documentary film

See also

Web links

Reports, reports

Victim groups

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Christina Scheidegger, Susanne Stöckl: «For decades, babies were stolen right after birth all over Spain. A 74-year-old gynecologist would have been tried on Tuesday. It would be the first conviction in such a case. " (Interview with the freelance journalist Julia Macher). In: Swiss radio and television . November 12, 2019, accessed on July 8, 2020 (Swiss Standard German, from at least 3:52).
  2. ↑ a b c Ute Müller: Spain's stolen children. In: The world . December 1, 2008, accessed on November 13, 2019 (German).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Hella Camargo: First judgment in the baby robbery process. In: Humanistic press service . October 18, 2019, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  4. ↑ The victims are left alone, the perpetrators protected. In: Deutschlandfunk Nova . September 29, 2018, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h Hans-Günter Kellner: The robbed children of the Franco regime. In: Deutschlandfunk . November 26, 2011, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  6. ↑ Andrea Bauer: Baby robbery in Spain "I was sold like a doll." In: Der Spiegel . September 9, 2012, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  7. ↑ Sebastian Kisters: Spain's Stolen Children. In: tagesschau.de . May 22, 2017, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  8. ↑ a b Forced adoptions and child trafficking in Spain. In: Web.de . June 28, 2018, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Margot Litten: A long night over Spain's stolen children - walls of silence. In: Deutschlandfunk. February 25, 2017, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  10. ↑ a b Manuel Ansede: DNA tests cast doubt on Spain's “stolen baby” network. In: El País . October 25, 2018, accessed on July 8, 2020 .
  11. ↑ a b Katya Adler: Spain's stolen babies. In: BBC . October 18, 2011, accessed July 8, 2020 .
  12. ↑ a b c d e Thomas Urban: Baby robbery in Spain: doctor found guilty. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 8, 2018, accessed on July 8, 2020 (German).
  13. ^ A b c Veronica Frenzel: Trial against Baltasar Garzón divides Spain. In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 24, 2012, accessed July 8, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Helene Zuber: Spain Judge Garzón puts the Franco regime in the dock. In: Der Spiegel. October 16, 2008, accessed November 13, 2019 .
  15. ↑ a b Katharina Graça Peters: Vortex around Spain's star lawyer Garzón The judge and his executioner. In: Der Spiegel. April 24, 2010, accessed November 13, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Sor María se Niega a declarar y los afectados lo califican de 'atrocidad' | España | Accesible | elmundo.es. In: El Mundo . April 15, 2012, accessed July 8, 2020 (Spanish).
  17. ↑ Els nens perduts del franquisme. In: IMDb. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .
  18. ↑ Franco's Legacy - Spain's Stolen Children. In: IMDb. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .
  19. ^ The Silence of Others. In: IMDb. Retrieved July 8, 2020 .