EVERY TIME A WHALE PASSES THROUGH THE STRAIT A BABY DIES

For over eighteen months I have been writing about the cases of the missing babies that were first announced in La Línea de la Concepción in November 2009 but which have since been reported throughout Spain. Indeed there are now 105 “denuncias” in the Campo de Gibraltar alone.


In La Línea the missing babies were largely all born either in the former municipal hospital or two private clinics in the town. The mothers were told their babies had died shortly after birth but the suspicion of many of these families is their babies were sold or offered up to adoptive families.

The cases in the Campo de Gibraltar have been taken over by the Algeciras prosecutor who in turn has ordered the National Police to investigate. The majority of the reports of the missing babies relate to the 60s and 70s although some extend in to the 1980s.

On Tuesday afternoon the San José cemetery closed its gates after a La Línea judge ordered three of the niches to be opened. At around 17.00, with the judge, a judicial secretary, forensic police and members of the specialised and violent crime squad in attendance, the exhumations started. The parents of the babies involved were only informed hours before the niches were opened and the mobile phones of the cemetery employees were impounded so no photographs could be taken.

The final resting places opened belonged to a baby that allegedly died in 1971 and two who passed away in 1988. In the first case the remains were supposedly buried but seven years later the parents decided to place their son in a niche. It was then the parents discovered the cemetery had not registered their child’s burial and in the place of a certificate for the moving of a tomb they were given one for interment. In the two 1988 cases the remains are in the cemetery but the families believe their own new born babies were sold or offered for adoption.

Now we are approaching the moment of truth in these specific cases. The remains from each tomb were placed in a separate cardboard box. In one tomb there was just dust, in the case of the baby from 1971 some suspicious bones and in the third bone fragments. These will now be analysed by the forensic scientists and if human remains then DNA tested to see if they match with their alleged family members.

Many of the mothers who gave birth and believe their babies were stolen did not have the support of a family around them because they had come to La Línea from another part of Spain looking for work, often in Gibraltar. However the story of Francisco del Valle, whose son supposedly died on July 7 1971, is pitiful to modern day ears.

Their baby died just two hours after it was born. The matron told them what had happened and said they were not to worry as they were young and could have more children. It was then explained to them that every time a whale passed through the Strait of Gibraltar a baby died, and that is what had happened in their case.

Del Valle says because of their ignorance and the epoch in which they then lived – the Franco dictatorship - they said nothing. However he was shocked to find the coffin supposedly bearing the body of his son weighed virtually nothing. Now the DNA of the pieces of bone will be matched with that of his wife and the truth will finally be known.

OPEN THE MISSING BABIES’ TOMBS

As according to the Gospels Christ’s tomb was found open on Easter Sunday so the timing of the families who babies were allegedly stolen at birth in demanding just before Easter to have their niches opened is spot on.


For over a year I have written about the missing babies first from La Línea but then throughout Cádiz province and wider Spain. Their parents fear they were taken from them at birth and handed over to an adopted family.

The cases largely date from the 1960s and 1970s and the initial reports centred on La Línea’s former municipal hospital and two nursing homes. At least one of these babies, now a grown man, has links to Gibraltar.

Whilst the cases in La Línea were quickly taken up by the Algeciras prosecutor and handed over to the National Police for investigation the Cádiz prosecutor has been slower to act. The majority of cases in the provincial capital relate to the Zamacola nursing home which stood on the site of the present Punta Europa Hospital.

Anadir, the association that represents many of the families who fear their babies or brothers and sisters were stolen for adoption, has collected over 2,000 signatures to demand that the Cádiz investigation is speeded up. After a meeting of 300 members in Chiclana a protest has been called for May 4 when its delegate in Andalucía, Chary Herrera, will meet the Cádiz prosecutor to make two demands.

The first and most fundamental is that an order be issued to open the niches that are supposed to contain the remains of the babies that died in Cádiz hospitals. The majority from the Zamacola are interred at the San José de Cádiz cemetery.

Of course this is not possible for all the families. When Cristina Díaz Carrasco first hit the Spanish national headlines over the alleged death at birth of her brother in La Línea’s hospital in 1967 it was discovered there was no record of his birth, death or interment and his supposed grave had disappeared. When a family in Algeciras opened the niche of their baby son who is said to have died in La Línea hospital after the family were involved in a car crash it was found to contain just a t-shirt. To open a grave at any time is a traumatic experience for those involved - for the grieving families it could be very traumatic indeed.

Anadir also wants the prosecutor to establish a free DNA bank in the province so that the remains found can be tested against surviving family members. Whilst some tombs could be empty it is suspected that in some cases the healthy baby was substituted for another that died and given to that family, probably purchased. In that case the tombs could contain the remains of the baby from the adoptive family.

If the Cádiz prosecutor agrees to these demands then the province will become the pioneer and this example will almost certainly be followed throughout Andalucía. In Sevilla, Granada and Huelva there are other cases coming to light and there too signatures are being collected for action.

The number of suspected cases in La Línea and wider Cádiz now is in the region of 300 although those that have been formulated in to official reports stand at about half of this total.

SPAIN’S STATE PROSECUTOR ORDERS INVESTIGATION INTO EACH MISSING BABY

Spain’s Fiscalía General del Estado has upped the ante in the investigation into the cases of the missing babies. Although such reports are now widespread they started in La Línea and at least one case there could have links to Gibraltar.

The State Prosecutor’s office has sent orders to all prosecutors in the country ordering them to investigate all the official reports on the cases of stolen babies that have currently been presented before them. The office of Cándido Conde-Pumpido has instructed the 17 senior prosecutors in the autonomous communities as well as the 50 provincial prosecutors to open official proceedings to ascertain if the cases are relevant to the penal code.

The action by Cándido Conde-Pumpido comes months after the Cádiz prosecutor and the prosecutor responsible for the Campo de Gibraltar in Algeciras took steps to order a judicial investigation which were the first in Spain.

Since last October the judicial police in Algeciras have been taking statements from those making official declarations, largely in La Línea. In the border town the number has been placed at around 50 but not all have made ‘denuncias’. The National Police HQ in Cádiz city has now followed suit and is also handling some cases involving the Campo de Gibraltar which have come under its territorial jurisdiction.

After the province of Cádiz other prosecutors in Málaga, Sevilla, Granada and Valencia now have opened investigations. It is understood there have also been a cascade of reports of missing babies largely occurring during the Franco era from various points in Spain. The province of Cádiz has to date the largest number of cases with 30 currently in the hands of the prosecutors.

Families believe they were the victims of an organised network that operated in public and private hospitals from the 1950s to the 1990s – although cases after the Franco era are in the minority. The babies, now adults, were all officially registered as dead within hours of their birth.

There are numerous cases in which the births, deaths and burials were never recorded, of empty or non-existent graves, contradictory medical reports, even testimonies from medical staff admitting the newly born babies were stolen and sold to other families who paid for them.

The State Prosecutor has voiced the belief that the robberies of newly born babies was not organised at a national level but was carried out by various networks in different points of the country. It was this argument that was used at the end of January to reject a collective denuncia from the Asociación Nacional de Afectados por Adopciones Irregulares (Anadir) made before the State Prosecutor’s own office listing 261 documented cases.

Hence the State Prosecutor has now asked the various prosecutors offices as regional and provincial level to work to a unified criteria in investigating the cases of missing babies without infringing on their autonomy to act.

None-the-less the scandal over Spain’s missing babies may be far greater that the State Prosecutor is willing to admit. It is reported Judge Baltasar Garzón has estimated that during the post war period of the Franco dictatorship a staggering 30,000 babies were re-allocated in this way. Garzón has reached that conclusion by gleaning facts and figures from various studies.

It has also been reported that 200,000 pesetas was the price of acquiring such a baby in the 1960s. In his book – Mala gente que camina – Benjamín Prado says that in Spain people think “such things only happened in Argentina or Chile which had much shorter dictatorships. The courts do not want to investigate in case the same thing happened here.”

THE T-SHIRT IN AN EMPTY TOMB

Over the last year I have reported on the missing babies of La Línea. These were babies who supposedly died shortly after birth in the municipal hospital or two private hospitals in the border town in the 1960s and 1970s. Their burial was said to have been taken care of by the hospitals but now there is no trace of them in official records or at the cemetery. It is suspected they are amongst – Franco’s babies – of whom Judge Baltasar Garzón believes there were 30,000 during the dictatorship. Babies who their mother’s were told had died but were in fact passed to adoptive parents. The Algeciras prosecutor has taken up the cases in La Línea and recently called in the National Police to investigate. To those files can now be added the disturbing case of the Algeciras mother who opened her child’s tomb to find it empty except for just a t-shirt.


It was back in 1972 that María Rodríguez was travelling with her husband and five children in a car when they were involved in an accident. They were all taken to La Línea hospital as the collision took place within the boundaries of San Roque which is served by that medical centre. In the car with María and her husband were their children aged nine, seven, five and four years plus their baby boy. None except the father had been seriously hurt.

María and her husband were later transferred to hospital in Algeciras and were told their children would follow them as their injuries were light. However when her sister went to La Línea hospital the next day she was told the baby had died.

Apparently the baby was entered in a niche in Algeciras cemetery but María never knew who had paid for the funeral. She says her daughter has always wondered whether he died or not because the baby was perfectly healthy. On the death certificate the child was named as José María with the cause of death stated as a fracture of the skull with massive damage to the brain. Yet the accident report of the time said all the family had been only slightly injured even though María’s husband subsequently died.

In 1992 she decided to have the remains of her son moved to the same niche as her husband. However when they opened his tomb it was empty except for a t-shirt. She says it was a yellow t-shirt which she has kept to this day as she has nothing else of her baby son –no casket, no remains.

That year was a traumatic one for María for when José María would have been 20 and eligible for his military service she received notice of his call up. She said she burst in to tears because how it was possible they called him up after he supposedly had been dead for 20 years?

It was recently with the news of all the families with the missing babies in La Línea that María decided to contact the others involved. She is also going to testify before the Algeciras prosecutor. María has visited the Archivo Histórico de La Línea that records all the admissions to La Línea hospital in that period. There is no record of any member of her family having been treated there.

A desperate story which leaves María’s with just one wish: “I want to know if my son died or if he is alive.”

FRANCO’S 30,000 STOLEN BABIES

La Línea is the Spanish town that has grown up across the border from Gibraltar at the tip of southern Spain. Over the years Spaniards have flocked to the town to seek work in the dock and ship yards plus the other booming businesses of Gibraltar. This is relevant to what follows because it means the itinerant husbands and wives did not have their families to support them in the event of giving birth or a child’s death.

Last November Cristina Díaz Carrasco broke the astonishing tale of her brother’s possible disappearance from La Línea hospital in 1967 to the media. He was said to have died shortly after his birth. As her mother was from Irún in Northern Spain and had no family in the area his body was buried by the hospital. The family returned each summer and left flowers on what was presumed to be his grave. However after works at the cemetery in 1980 the grave could not be found and it was subsequently discovered that there were no records at the cemetery, the Civil Registry or the archives of his birth, death or interment. (The photograph above shows the baby's grandmother with his supposedly dead body in the hospital mortuary).

It was an interesting story but I presumed a one off. Not so because since Cristina made her suspicions public at least five other families have come forward with a similar tale in La Línea.

One of the latest involves a woman named Carmen from the Canary Islands. She came to La Línea in 1968 with her husband to work. She arrived pregnant and fearing all was not well sought medical aid. On November 14, 1968 she gave birth at the private Inmaculada Clinic to a son who she was told soon died.

Neither Carmen nor her husband had any family in La Línea and the hospital told them not to worry it would take care of everything. It was when her daughter saw Cristina Díaz Carrasco on the Antena 3 TV programme ‘Espejo Público’ and they discussed it she found their situations had been very similar and just a year apart.

She had never visited La Línea cemetery to visit the grave of her son but now she decided to make the trip. Again no grave could be found nor did the cemetery have any records of such a baby having been buried there in November of 1968. She also visited the Archivo Histórico Municipal in La Línea which holds the records from that time. There is no record of his birth, death or burial.

One might argue that this were cases of poor record keeping except that in wider Spain during the Franco era it has been established that children were indeed taken from their parents without their knowledge and passed on to an adoptive family.

It is reported Judge Baltasar Garzón has estimated that during the post war period of the Franco dictatorship a staggering 30,000 babies were re-allocated in this way. Garzón has reached that conclusion by gleaning facts and figures from various studies. It has also been reported that 200,000 pesetas was the price of acquiring such a baby in the 1960s. In his book – Mala gente que camina – Benjamín Prado says that in Spain people think “such things only happened in Argentina or Chile which had much shorter dictatorships. The courts do not want to investigate in case the same thing happened here.”

In Madrid in the 1960s one of the standard jokes amongst children was to say to their parents “did you buy me in the Rastro?” However Prado points out that many did just that – bought them at the market - and hence many Spaniards do not know their true parentage or indeed who they are.

Now there are many web pages and social networks on this theme. The problem is that the Andalucía health system that runs the present hospital La Línea didn’t exist then and the birth and death records are in archives with those involved in recording them long since retired or deceased. However the thirst for the truth amongst the 40-year-olds is strong and they will not be silenced until the truth is uncovered.

As I wrote this article the prosecutor in Algeciras – the nearest major town to La Línea - has decided to open an investigation into these local disappearances. Chief prosecutor, Juan Cisneros, has accepted the official reports by six families that involve births at the then municipal hospital in La Línea as well as two private clinics in the town. Cisneros says these cases have to be investigated to find answers for the families involved and determine just what happened in the last century.

All the affected families have now joined an association called Anadir formed by Antonio Barroso. He was adopted and suspects he was stolen from his true parents. The lawyer Enrique Vila is taking all these cases to the High Court both in Cádiz and in Spain where there are dozens more. However it has to be recognised that because of the time that has passed any investigation will be difficult to pursue a fact that was recently stressed by the head prosecutor in the Cádiz court, Ángeles Ayuso.

(A version of the above article appeared on Tuesday July 27 in the Morning Star).