Spain's stolen babies and the families who lived a lie

[dipsydoodle]

Spanish society has been shaken by allegations of the theft and trafficking of thousands of babies by nuns, priests and doctors, which started under Franco and continued up to the 1990s.

I first met Manoli Pagador in Getafe, in a working-class suburb of Madrid. She was attending a meeting for people affected by the scandal Spaniards call "ninos robados" - stolen children.

She has three daughters and lots of grandchildren, but she has never got over the loss of her first-born - a son - nearly 40 years ago.

She had come to think she was crazy for believing he was alive, instead of dead and buried as hospital doctors had told her.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15335899

[Demeter]

1. Is This Something Uniquely Hispanic?

Taking children from their parents and awarding them to the parents' enemies-- South America is full of these stories.

Was this the basis of the stolen by gypsies meme?

It is a very foreign concept to this American of Polish ancestry. Foreign as in something out of science fiction, or something equally far-fetched.