Could a DNA law help reunite victims of Spain’s ‘stolen babies’ scandal still seeking closure decades on?

A new film explores the horrific state-sponsored snatching of newborn babies that begun in Spain during the dictatorship of General Franco and continued for years afterwards. Graham Keeley talks to its director – and some of the victims of the scandal – about the battle to find justice for the thousands of families effected

Ines Madrigal, a ‘stolen baby’ who has called for a DNA law to help victims find their relatives easier (AFP/Getty)

It is one of Spain’s most shameful periods – thousands of babies snatched from their mothers across half a century.

From the end of the Spanish civil war to the early 1990s, tens of thousands of children became so-called “stolen babies”. These newborns were victims of General Francisco Franco’s desire to “cleanse” the nation by taking the babies of left-wingers or Republicans and giving them to childless couples who were more sympathetic to the regime.

After Franco’s death, children were still taken away from their mothers by priests, nuns, midwives, or hospital workers for money and sold on via the secretive adoption networks that had been created. The mothers were sometimes in prison, not married or judged to be of dubious moral background. In other cases, women fell foul of baby thieves.