For decades, and until not long ago, in Spain one of the greatest atrocities that our country has experienced was practiced -behind the back of society, but under the protection of the regime and beyond it. A huge number of children were abducted first from prisons, then from clinics and maternity hospitals, and their biological families still do not know their whereabouts to this day. No one should go through something like this, but the reality is, sadly, a very different one. The very nature of the crime has prevented, in fact, the existence of official figures.
What originally began for political reasons (the children of female political prisoners were handed over to families that met the patriotic requirements indicated by the authorities) soon struck hard at the lowest part of the table, and the most vulnerable, with the connivance of the Church: mothers of large families, poor, young or single. Most of them with serious economic, cultural and educational deficiencies. Thousands of mothers were deprived -through deception or fraud- of their children.
The pattern is repeated, systematically, and throughout the territory. It increases, in fact, at the moment when ‘giving birth’ ceases to be something domestic and is carried out in clinics and hospitals, a practice that lives its terrifying heyday in the 70s. Mothers, many of them today are our grandmothers, who dealt with the news of the sudden death of the newborn. Young women who unfairly accepted what their hearts knew to be false. But who would mistrust a doctor, a nurse or a nun?
A crime against humanity that, however, has had a certain impunity and laxity when it comes to implementing truly effective systems that repair the irreparable. An arduous task in which the administrative barriers between communities have made what seemed impossible at first glance even more difficult. Find the answer, the origin, the truth. DNA, in short. Until today. The first results of the genetic analysis of samples have been obtained to establish a relationship of possible cases of stolen babies.
Carried out by the Fisabio Foundation Sequencing Service, dependent on the Department of Universal Health and Public Health of the Generalitat Valenciana, the analysis has started from 134 biological samples from 91 relatives of stolen babies and 43 possible stolen babies. Using new massive sequencing techniques, it has been determined that there is a relationship between two sisters and a brother and his sister. Science, at last, overcomes the obstacles and the silence that families have encountered for years.
This finding is, in the words of Rosa Pérez Garijo, Minister of Democratic Quality, “very good news” that demonstrates the importance of centralizing identification work to “shed light on possible episodes of stolen babies in our territory.”
The Valencian Community thus becomes the first public administration in Spain to carry out a study on cases of stolen babies through the most advanced techniques with a vocation to cross borders to uncover a praxis that skipped them all.
To find the long-awaited coincidence, the Fisabio Sequencing team has studied some very specific DNA fragments naturally present in the genome, called microsatellites. These are specific regions of the DNA chain that contain specific consecutively repeated sequences. Related people usually have the same number of repeated units, that is, the pattern of this repetition is hereditary and for this reason its study is a common forensic analysis tool.
In this context, according to Pérez Garijo, the creation of a State DNA Bank “that allows the crossing of data between autonomous communities and increases the chances that family members can be reunited” is vital. Its objective is none other than to continue taking samples from people affected by the theft of newborns “so that they are part of this DNA bank that will clarify a practice that was carried out in Spain for decades with absolute impunity.”
This is the case of Josefina, Laura or María, who have participated in the documentary “Morir tranquil·la. Bebés i mares furtades a terres valencianes”, a production promoted by the Generalitat Valencia that gives a voice to mothers who, after leaving the delivery room in the 1960s and 1970s, had to listen to phrases such as “don’t worry, you can have more children” , “dedicate yourself to taking care of those you already have”, for those who perpetrated the crime. The same words of comfort that were accompanied by small wooden boxes propped up and the urgency of a burial that would shelve -as soon as possible- that nightmare.
An awareness campaign that wants to provide tools to those who have never had them. The objective is that all relatives who suspect that they may have been victims of a case of stolen babies undergo DNA tests “that allow finding the relationship after too many years of waiting and fighting to shed light on crimes against humanity.” For this, the associations of stolen babies are in charge of managing the necessary documentation for the collection of samples from the interested persons.
