First person to go to jail over Spain's Franco-era baby-snatching scandal to be alleged victim

The first person to go to jail in connection with a major Franco-era baby-snatching scandal in Spain is to be one of its alleged victims.

Ascensión López, 53, was found guilty in 2015 of slandering the nun she says acted as a go-between in her sale from a hospital to her adoptive parents in Almería in 1964. 

Ms López has told The Telegraph that she is unemployed, suffers from a bone-wasting disease and is too poor to pay a €3,000 euro (£2,700) fine, plus costs and €40,000 in damages to Sister Dolores Baena.

If she does not pay, the court in Almería will proceed to condemn Ms López to a probable five-month sentence in prison.

Ms López learned last week that her plea for a pardon had been turned down by Spain’s cabinet, despite being backed by a 90,000-strong petition.

“That it should be me, a victim, who will be the first person to go to jail in this scandal makes me indignant and incredibly frustrated,” Ms López said.

“I am being treated for depression and my health has worsened since all this started, so I can’t think that prison will suit me very well. And what am I being punished for? Just because I want to find out my mother’s identity?”

Ms López believes she is one of tens of thousands of people who during the mid and late 20th century were adopted illegally in Spain. Some 2,000 women have told Spanish prosecutors that their children were stolen, often passed off as dead in suspicious circumstances.

Ms Lopez claims that her father, a senior figure in the Franco regime in Almeria whose marriage was childless, bought her for 250,000 pesetas in 1964 via his niece, Sister Dolores, who was working in a Seville hospital at the time.

Ms López accused Sister Dolores of “organising” her illegal adoption, leading the nun to sue her for defamation.

No one has yet stood trial for their role in stealing a child or falsifying documents.

Inés Madrigal, who reported a Madrid gynaecologist four years ago after her mother told her that she had been illegally adopted in his clinic in 1969, told The Telegraph that Ms López was being made a “scapegoat”.

“All of us who are campaigning for justice feel that this is a warning to us.”

A British MEP, Jude Kirton-Darling, is drawing up a report with recommendations that will soon be approved by the European Parliament after she led a fact-finding mission to Spain in May.

“Spain has left victims to mount their own investigations over decades with no legal or psychological support, and these people are at their wits’ end,” Ms Kirton-Darling told The Telegraph.

Among the measures being proposed will be a DNA bank allowing potential victims to provide samples for free and cross-reference results to seek lost relatives.

“Spain must bolster victim support,” Ms Kirton-Darling said.