Wednesday 27 July 2011

Vitoria family denounces 'stolen baby' in La Linea

Tombs of exhumed baby 'bodies'
LA LINEA (Agencies) A family from Vitoria, in Galicia, has denounced that one of it members is supposed to have died in 1962 at the hospital in La Línea, in the belief that the case could be part of the 'stolen babies' that allegedly took place at the hospital in the Franco era. A spokesperson for the family, brother to the 'deceased', said that his parents moved from Vitoria to La Línea in the late 1950s, as his father worked for the Bank of Spain and was assigned to the town. The family included a girl and a boy, but the latter died aged five months. The mother had two more boys, one in 1959 and another in 1962. The last one was delivered under the direction of a gynaecologist whose name has been linked to several similar cases at the same hospital.>>>
His parents told him that the boy was born alive and that the midwife "showed him to my mother and said it was a beautiful baby, that she would show him to everyone in the hospital." The child's father didn't see him at that time. However, just a few hours later, the father was told that the baby had died. There was no explanation, nor was the family told the cause of death. In fact, according to the baby's brother, the family spokesperson, his father had to insist to be allowed to see his child's body, which he eventually was able to do. Neither parent ever saw the baby again.
As in most of these cases, the hospital took charge of the burial, including costs, and the baby was allegedly interred at the San José cemetery in La Línea; the family even has a photo of the nicho at their home in Vitoria. However, several members of the family came to La Línea last week to find that the baby had not been registered as buried at that cemetery. The hospital admission document does register the mother's admission but does not specify why, whereas the document that certifies the baby's death, or rather the mother's abortion, is almost unreadable. A single word stands out from it all: 'emphysema'.

"We know we're not likely to find him if he's alive but we hope this kind of thing never happens again," said the family spokesperson

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