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The first woman recognized by the Spanish courts as one of the "stolen babies" of the Franco dictatorship discovered her biological family through a DNA database.
Ines Madrigal, 50, also said she learned from her recently discovered parents that her mother had voluntarily abandoned her.
Dozens of babies were abducted from their mothers – who were told that their children had died – and given to others to adopt during the dictatorship of 1939-1975, often with the help of the 39, catholic church.
Initially, the babies were removed from leftist opponents of the regime. This practice was later extended to supposedly illegitimate children and those from poorer families. Newborns were to be raised by well-to-do, conservative and pious Roman Catholic families. Estimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands of victims.
On Thursday, Madrigal, who discovered in 2010 that she was a stolen baby, said she was able to find a cousin through a DNA database. The cousin then informed her that her biological brothers and sisters were also looking for her.
"For the first time, I finished the puzzle of my life," she said. "I know who I am and where I come from."
Madrigal said that she had discovered that her biological mother, a woman named Pilar, had died in 2013, at the age of 73. "Pilar never knew if I was a boy or a girl, but I know that she never forgot me," she said. "I have four brothers whom I have met, who are wonderful people and who have opened my arms and heart."
Madrigal did not want to reveal the identity of her biological family in order to protect their privacy.
Last year, a Spanish court found a former gynecologist guilty of kidnapping Madrigal from his birth mother in 1969, shortly after his birth at the defunct San Ramón clinic in Madrid. But the statute of limitations saved him from the belief of his role in the scandal.
The revelation that Madrigal's mother abandoned her favorably appears to be jeopardizing her chances of getting a verdict against Vela when the Spanish Supreme Court hears her appeal against last year's ruling on an undetermined date.
The Attorney General's office in Madrid on Thursday issued a statement in which he said that given the new turning point in the Madrigal affair, he did not consider that it had been stolen.
But Madrigal said she remained convinced that Vela had broken the law by hiding her true origins. "He should have registered my birth and he did not do it," she said. "He treated me like a puppy. The state never knew that I existed.
Madrigal is so far the only case of stolen babies to be tried. Most other lawsuits have already been dismissed by the courts because they took place after the expiration of the statute of limitations.
Spain began investigating cases of stolen babies only a decade ago, when Magistrate Baltasar Garzón opened an investigation into the more than 30,000 children in the protection of the right-wing regime.
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