just because it's not a new song, doesn't make it any less sad.

i was trying to find something interesting to talk to you about so i was looking around at various news sources, and on the BBC i found this story about stolen spanish babies. sounds intriguing, no? yes.

back in the day, spain was ruled by an evil dictator named francisco franco. americans can't really comprehend dictatorship because it's not any part of who we are or what we do here. in america, you can basically do whatever you want whenever you want wherever you want. well, except pray in school. can't do that. but, anything else goes. in dictatorships, not only can you not do what you DO want, if you do what the ruler DOES NOT want - you will be punished. punishment which be anything from personal sanction to death. there is no plea bargain. there's not even a chance to give your side of the story. break a rule? BAM. dead.

okay, so, point number one about franco --->> strict in a way you should thank those lucky stars you're not allowed to pray to in school, that you will never understand.

point number two, franco was a fervent supporter of the catholic church. not like, "oh, i go some wednesdays and most sundays and if there's a potluck i will stay for that afterwards." more like, "if you don't believe what i believe about church, i will kill you." which, knowing the wee bit that i know about god in general and catholicism in particular, strikes me as somewhat ironic. anyhoo - the catholic church (not the little-c "catholic means everywhere" church, rather the big-C Catholic church, but i don't hang much with the bigs here, so you're just going to have to imaginate.) had a largish role in the franco régime. and, by largish, i mean there were laws forcing, enforcing, and reinforcing catholic values.

one thing catholics are pretty set against is the whole out-of-wedlock sexual relations thing. well, they were in franco's time, at least. i am not so sure where the pope stands on anything nowadays. also, at least in the past, the contraceptive thing was a huge no-no for catholics. for the confused and lustful young catholic folk, the choice was fairly much sin this way or sin that way or sin both ways. lots of couples chose to sin only in the sexual relations way and opted not to sin in the contraceptive sense. in case you aren't completely familiar with the mechanics, the outcome of this combination is unwed mommies.

the catholic church recognizes the validity of one and only one unwed mother, and her, well now, they venerate her. but to the rest of the unwed masses they are not quite so friendly. this puts an unwed mother living under a religious dictatorship at a bit of a disadvantage. starting sometime in the late 1930s and continuing on up to franco's death in 1975 and beyond that into the 1990s, these unwed babies were removed from their unwed mommies and turned over to married couples.

how did this happen exactly? well, apparently and according to the BBC report, the unwed mothers went to hospital to have their babies and left hospital without them. the hospitals were run by priests to whom answered the nuns and the doctors. (the nuns acted the role we now assign to nurses, although our modern day nurses are doubtless better-trained.) okay, so... what do we have? a scared and guilty unwed mother combined with authoritative doctors, nuns, maybe a priest thrown in. child is born and immediately taken away by nuns. later, a nun comes and tells the mother that her baby is dead. and, that's it goodbye pack your bag out the door. NO QUESTIONS!

the practice went on, as i said, for decades, and over time it was expanded beyond unwed mothers to include all sorts of families the government-church or church-government deemed unsuitable. the babies were at first given into and later sold into more suitable "approved" families. officials involved with the cases believe that up to 300,000 babies were removed from their birth parents. as investigations continue and more cases come to light, it is believed that the evidence will point to franco's people removing babies from dissident familes and giving them to facist supporters so that they could be raised in an approved manner. (durr.)

how could this happen? firstly, a technicality - in spain, neither the mother's nor the father's name is required on a birth certificate so a baby can essentially be declared an orphan by the doctor who signs the form. secondly, the government believed they were entitled to make these choices, a common attitude in the dictatorship type of government. finally, the parents of these stolen babies were in no position to argue. a technicality allows the strong to exploit the weak in the name of "right" as defined by the philosophy held by the strong.

just because it's not a new song, doesn't make it any less sad.



from the BBC report:
The scale of the baby trafficking was unknown until this year, when two men - Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, childhood friends from a seaside town near Barcelona - discovered that they had been bought from a nun. Their parents weren't their real parents, and their life had been built on a lie.

Juan Luis Moreno discovered the truth when the man he had been brought to call "father" was on his deathbed.

"He said, 'I bought you from a priest in Zaragoza'. He said that Antonio had been bought as well."

The pair were hurt and angry. They say they felt like two dogs that had been bought at a pet shop. An adoption lawyer they turned to for advice said he came across cases like theirs all the time.

The pair went to the press and suddenly the story was everywhere. Mothers began to come forward across Spain with disturbingly similar stories.