Bat bi hiru lau
Watch your back, watch your back
Ertzaintza's gonna get you
Watch your back, watch your back
Ertzaintza's gonna get you
Watch your back, watch your back
Oh, there's a crime here
It's a coming from the Euskal Herria
Gotta wash those red hands
It's the crimes of the basquelands
Cali mucho
Quintessentially Basque
Yeah, if you get it at a fiesta, it's probably more half and half.
It depends, really.
They're not going heavier on the wine, probably.
We never know. If we're friends in the barman...
And it's cheap wine, and the wine might be cheaper than the Coca-Cola.
Oh yeah, actually, yeah.
And now that I think about it, they have at the fiestas now a fountain drink type.
Yeah, like a...
Like it just comes out mixed, as if it was...
Which is amazing.
Like a soda refill thing.
And I'm having the cutest variation ever.
A Cali Cheeky, a little Cali mucho.
A small one.
Which I've always loved the name.
And since we're talking about it, why not mention a little bit of the history?
It comes from Algorta, which is a neighborhood right towards one of the ends of the metro line in Bilbao.
It's a different municipality, but in the 70s we were just looking up names of the quadrillas,
which, well, we'll get into that another time.
But it was a quadrilla, or a kind of group of friends with the name of Anzalac,
who were getting together and bought 2,000 liters of red wine.
Turns out it was not delicious.
It was kind of going off.
I wonder when they bought it, if six months beforehand or whatever.
But in any case, they were like, shit, what are we going to do with this?
It was like all the drink they had bought for the part for the fiestas, right?
Of the old port, right? Old port in Algorta.
Portu Sarra or Puerto Viejo.
And so they came up with an idea of mixing it with Coke.
So half Coca-Cola, half red wine, as we were saying.
The proportions are flexible.
And apparently to come up with the name,
it had to do with these two members of the group of friends.
One was called Calimero, or his nickname was Calimero.
And the other one was Mochongo.
So Cali-mocho was what they decided or became the name.
Yeah, awesome.
So cute. Very cute.
I think we should have more pictures of them in more bars.
Yeah, they should be like portraits.
Portraits should be.
Maybe in Algorta, maybe in some bar in the old port.
Excursion.
Yeah, there you go. Another one for the part.
We've got to go on these excursions. We have so many excursions now.
And I'm drinking Chocoli because I don't like Cali-mocho.
I'm so sorry. I don't like it.
It's important to mention that it is red wine with Coca-Cola.
It's never someone else.
And you're having a nice white Chocoli.
Yes, and I even forgot the name. You know the name.
Gorka Izagirre. It's a Biscayan Chocoli, which I love.
I try to support Gipu-Skoa, of course,
but I will give you the Chocoliña from Biscaya. It's quite nice.
Thanks. Thanks. If that means the right task.
Definitely.
The name of this episode we haven't kind of settled on yet.
So we're going with Spain Stole My Baby.
I'm going to go exclamation mark.
Exclamation mark.
Goyo and I, which we were saying it sounds like an episode of Mori Povich or Jerry Springer,
but you probably don't know who those people are, do you?
I know who Jerry Springer is.
Okay, so one of those shows.
They re-show that.
Sounds like the episode name of one of those shows.
We're not doing any DNA today, but no, no, no.
And no fighting.
Who's the father?
That's definitely how.
Who's the father? Patriarchy.
It is how we solve those crimes, right?
Yeah.
So we both of us came up with a one-sentence synopsis.
So I challenged Goyo this week to come up with one because they are kind of fun to come up with.
Yeah, I came up with one.
Do you want me to go first?
Yeah, you go first.
Okay, so here's my first go ever at a one-sentence synopsis.
Nearly four decades after the death of dictator Francisco Franco and the onset of democracy in the Spanish state,
hundreds of Basque women robbed of their children and Basque children robbed of their identities seek justice.
At least those whose suspicions were strong enough, who were ready to fight for the truth, and who had the tools and support to do so.
Whoa, that's more like a summary.
It was one sentence though.
Look at my punctuation.
Yes, it was. I could tell. I could tell.
I like it.
Mine is a lot shorter and a little more vague about what the story is about.
Yours can be an ex post.
Did I give too much away?
No.
That's great.
People know what they're getting into.
Okay, so there's your trigger warning.
Okay, everybody.
All right, so mine was a dictator and his cohorts plot to build a faithful following by building families to their liking.
Oh, I like that too.
Yeah.
It's very catchy. I like it.
And again, well, just to kind of highlight because usually they're more of a surprise for one of us.
But of course, in this case, it's just kind of a well-known episode in history.
So it's not like I don't know.
I mean, I hadn't heard of it.
I honestly hadn't heard of it.
Oh, really? At all?
No.
Till this year?
Yeah, this year.
When I mentioned it?
No, when you mentioned it, I'd already talked about it with Goyo.
Okay.
So I was like, oh, yes, of course.
All right.
But no, I'd never heard about it.
Interesting.
Well, I mean, I'd heard about it.
So that's it's a mini-spoiler.
Like I have heard about it.
But of course, you guys are going to talk about some specific cases.
We're going to go in depth.
Yeah.
And so I'm sure I haven't heard of any specific.
Yeah. And some stories of families, specific families and what they've been through and what their journey has been.
Yeah.
And also, like, it's we're going to be getting into like the whole history and everything.
And and then, of course, I'll go into like the judicial shit that when it was involved.
And, you know, that doesn't necessarily take place in the Basque Country, but we also have stories from the Basque Country to tell.
So if you all are like, what?
This isn't the Basque Country.
Then just hold on to your Chebella.
It's coming.
It's a process.
It's yeah.
The context, we have to understand the context, which is coming from the Spanish state in order to understand the severity of what happened.
What happened?
Yeah.
It definitely happened in Spain as well.
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
All over.
Yeah.
All right.
So Goyo is going to start us out today with a little, you know, history.
Yeah.
I thought, you know, like I just said, in order to really understand what was going on, we need to understand the sort of socio-cultural.
And historical context.
So leading up to the Spanish Civil War, as well as in the aftermath, which is really kind of what we're focusing on more on the aftermath.
There were so many facets that played into it and leading up to the Spanish Civil War, including class struggle, religious struggle, dictatorship versus democracy, fascism versus socialism and communism.
So the 19th century was a really turbulent time in Spain.
Progressives wanting to curtail the power of the Spanish monarchy were at political odds with the conservatives who wanted to prevent any kind of reformation.
And this latter group, the conservatives, was mostly made up of aristocrats and wealthy people and landowners.
So conflicts between these groups led to a series of three smaller civil wars called the Guerras Carlistas, which Douglas, yeah, Douglas did an ep on that a few weeks back.
So that was sort of part of the turbulence that kind of led up to the main Spanish Civil War.
And then turbulence throughout the mid 1800s brought on the first Spanish Republic. And then that quickly was dissolved and the House of Bourbon took over again, which is the ruling, not the reigning monarchy, royal family in Spain.
So the turbulence then at the end of the 19th century continued on into the early 20th century. And in 1923, under Miguel Primo de Rivera, the Spanish military orchestrated a coup d'etat, bringing Spain into a military dictatorship that would last until 1931, when the second Spanish Republic was established.
Then a few years later in 1936, there was a failed coup d'etat, which was the catalyst pushing Spain into this bloody civil war.
So the civil war was a conflict between two groups, the Republicans and the nationalists, Spanish nationalists.
The Republicans were what could be considered at that time loyalists because they wanted the government to remain the same. The left leaning government was called the Frente Popular at that time, the Popular Front, during that short-lived second republic from 1931 to 1939.
And this group was made up of different political parties, including socialists, communists, the separatist parties from the different regions of what is now the Spanish state, as well as Republicans and even anarchist parties.
But the other side, the nationalists, the Spanish nationalists, were made up of falangistas, and they were the main conservative parties and then the Spanish nationalist political parties in the early 20th century, along with conservative, traditionalist, and pro-monarchy parties.
So this coalition was led by a military junta, of which Francisco Franco quickly became the most prominent leader.
So the war starts in 1936 and lasts until 1939 with a nationalist victory, of course, and Franco leads the country as a military dictator until his death in 1975.
Died as an old man in his bed.
Fucked up. Yep, exactly. And so this party called the Falange was his political party was the only party in legal party in Spain during the whole dictatorship.
So all that said, we could go into much greater detail about the context leading up to the Civil War, the Civil War itself, and of course find numerous crimes with tenuous and more than tenuous connections to the Basque lands.
But the focus of what we wanted to talk about takes place in the aftermath of the war, starting in the immediate post-war era and continuing well into the 1980s, even after Franco's death and the reestablishment of democracy.
So that being said, some of the general characteristics of the Franco period connected to the methods of oppression that were the citizens were suffering from during the dictatorship. I'm going to enumerate some of those.
And I think it's important to keep in mind that many of these could be considered crimes or are crimes in their own right, or at least led to different crimes.
But some of them, and more specifically the last ones I'm going to mention, are key to being able to analyze the stories that we're going to talk about from these families from the Basque lands.
So basically, the Franco regime was characterized by authoritarianism, Spanish nationalism, national Catholicism, militarism, conservatism, anti-communism, and anti-liberalism.
And like I said a minute ago, all the political parties that existed previously in the Spanish state and all the regions that make up the Spanish state were made illegal.
So the Falange was the only legal party.
There were violent human rights abuses, of course, including but not limited to concentration camps, forced labor, executions, mostly against political and ideological enemies of Franco.
Trade unions and workers unions were made illegal. There was a strong and constant military presence and police presence.
Cultural diversity was repressed. For example, bullfighting and flamenco were promoted as quote unquote national traditions, while other traditions that were not considered quote unquote Spanish were suppressed specifically and especially the regional cultural differences.
Relatedly, the Franco era was Constellian centric. So the official, co-official status of Basque, Galician, and Catalan that existed in the Second Republic was revoked.
Also the Fueros, which Douglas you have mentioned multiple times on the pod, the Fueros in Guipusqua and Vizcaya, those were abolished as well.
Kind of like a Basque Bill of Rights. Yeah, yeah, the foot. Yeah, exactly.
So those were outlawed. Yeah, they were outlawed. They were abolished. Yeah.
Censorship was the general norm. So all the media was controlled and an example of this, not even just the media, but an example is the dubbed films.
Yeah. So all films were dubbed and are dubbed to this day.
Yeah. But back then that was the only access that they had to the film. So the content of the film was completely anything that was deemed inappropriate was modified.
Yeah. And I've heard stories from people saying like there would be romantic relationships between, I can't remember what film they would talk about, but it was like it was two people that were in love and you know it was a romantic relationship being portrayed on screen.
But the dubbing made it so that they were brother and sister.
So it was even more fucked up.
In an effort to like make it like, we don't talk about sex and we don't talk about you know like, they weren't married, you know, so that wasn't cool for them to be, you know, but they were made to look like brother and sister and I was like that's really messed up.
Yeah. And how can you tell that story then? Like, if anybody remembers what film that was you can write us and tell us. Yeah, I'd like to know.
I've heard it from several people. Like it came up so much that people were like, oh my god and the film, this one, it was a specific film. I don't know if it was Casablanca or if it was like some classic film that they made the two protagonists as brother and sister so that there was no like sex on screen.
We need to watch this actually and like laugh at it. Oh we should. We should. That could be a bonus episode.
Bonus episode of like, us watching it, drinking Cali Milocho and commenting. Reaction. Yeah, what they're talking about.
A reaction podcast. Yeah. Yeah.
So loving your context. It's great. I've got just a couple more and these last two are the ones that sort of specifically bring us into the discussion of the crimes of these stolen babies.
So Franco Spain was also characterized by hyper masculinity and the traditional role of women in society. So progressive laws from the Second Republic were avoided. For example, women had been granted the right to vote in the Second Republic, but that was obviously taken away.
No, yeah, I can't trust the women. Don't let them vote. But I mean, no men weren't voting in any kind of like fair, real elections at this time either, but they were allowed to at least. Women just weren't allowed to.
They were given like the token like, you're allowed to. Yeah, it was specifically revoked. And then another example of this repression or this oppression, excuse me, is that until the 1970s, women needed their father or their husband's signature as a co-signer to open a bank account.
The same can be said about the states though. Yeah. In the 1970s. In the 1970s. Really? Yes. I'm not shitting you. Yeah.
Wow. See, I didn't realize it was that. I know that was the case before, but I didn't realize it was so late in the States.
So and then finally divorce, contraception, and abortions were forbidden and civil marriages were abolished. So the like I said these last points specifically about the plight of women are the ones that are most directly connected to the stories that we're going to tell.
Yeah. Should we take a break? Let's do that. Okay, let's take a break.
Hello again. Hello, we're back.
Thank you for that wonderful, concise background of the dictatorship that was good.
And about what was happening at the time. So I'm going to start with something that happened after that.
So hang on to your chapellas everybody. And basically for the entirety of this episode, just hang on there for dear life.
It'd be crazy. Okay, so in 2011, a story broke in the Spanish press that an estimated 300,000 babies had been stolen from their birth parents to be sold to others who were perceived to be more deserving parents.
2011? In 2011. I mean, I already lived here. 2011. WF. Yeah.
I don't want to say that. We're not. We're explicit. Remember we have an explicit rating. What the fuck? Exactly.
I mean, I really thought. That's pretty late in the game, right? I thought that the story would have broken like in the 90s. Well, I'm sure it was there, but nobody touched it for whatever reason, right?
A lot of things were sort of taboo and it took people like a generation coming of age and questioning and realizing.
And everybody was traumatized. Sorry. That was alive during the dictatorship. There's still people alive that live through the dictatorship.
So they're still traumatized by that. And to talk about it is still kind of like hush, hush. You don't talk about it. You don't talk about it.
Something so personal and so tragic. These, a lot of the women who were affected by this just kept it in and didn't talk about it.
And that's why I said to a second ago that the, it took also a generation of the babies coming of age and questioning their identity. Yeah.
I mean, if we're talking 2011, we're talking DNA already. Yeah. Right. So you can't kind of can't hide from DNA. Exactly.
So there were already people that were, you know, suspicious. Of course. Right.
And so there were over there were 260 victims of this child trafficking who were demanding that an investigation be opened.
So there was in 2011 when the story broke, there were 260 that were demanding some sort of investigation into this.
And they wanted some sort of justice. Right. So the National Association of People Affected by Irregular Adoptions called ANADIR,
which is what I'm going to call it because that's the National Association of People Affected by Irregular Adoptions. There's a lot to say.
ANADIR. They brought their claim to the state attorney general's office in Madrid demanding a formal investigation.
ANADIR assures them that these cases aren't isolated and that there was an entire network of recruiters, doctors, nurses, and intermediaries,
mostly nuns, who had made a business of selling children throughout the Franco years and even decades after his death.
This trafficking started out as a politically motivated move, but it seems they found it to be quite lucrative and carried on with the practice in the later years.
So you had said that it had gone on past his death, but like into the 80s. But no, I found a case that was in the 90s.
Wow. In the 90s. So they backed their claims by providing as evidence falsified birth certificates, DNA tests,
testimonies from nurses, undertakers, and parents who confessed to having purchased their child.
The man who founded ANADIR, Antonio Barroso, believes himself to be one of the victims of this atrocity.
I was going to say we're all in that, you know, we're all born before the 90s.
Yeah. Yeah. So it was a deathbed confession from his father, quote unquote father, that piqued his curiosity.
He was told that he'd been bought for more than the cost of an apartment and that he was paid for in cash.
Wow. So his dad said that to him on his deathbed. Wow. The kind of layers.
After DNA tests proved this to be true, he tried taking his case to court, but with no luck,
and then decided to found this association in 2010, assuming there must be others like him.
Boy, was he surprised by just how many that turned out to be. What year was this? This was in 2010 that he founded it.
Oh my gosh. I'm still amazed at how recent it is. Yeah. What the fuck. Yeah.
So when he founded this association, stories came in, stories abounded of mothers who,
after years of bringing flowers to the graves of their dead infants, found out that those graves stood empty.
Several plaintiffs recalled giving birth to strong, screaming babies, only to be told that the child had died,
and then were refused the right to see the body, like we were talking about.
They were gaslighted into thinking that their delicate state couldn't handle the trauma.
Others examined official documents that had been provided to them that were in an outright contradiction.
In one case, the deceased baby was said to be both buried and cremated,
and the cause of death was in one document a respiratory problem, and in another his demise was due to malnourishment.
A funeral home worker professed to have personally transported 20 empty child-sized coffins.
In the case of Borroso, he discovered that his birth certificate listed his adopted parents as his birth parents, which, as I said, proved to be false.
So when this story hit the press, it caused the entire country to question how many more cases could there be, and how long has this been going on?
It's important now to give some background on the legal maneuvering that the country had been experiencing up to the point of this revolution.
So let's get into some legal stuff.
I'm feeling like I'm going to get annoyed already.
Well, probably. We're all going to get annoyed.
So, after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975...
Oh, let's drink to that.
...after the death of his... you know, he died in 1975.
So both the left and the right political parties of Spain, left and right, we said were the nationalists, right?
They were his party.
Yeah, the felonquistas.
And then the... I don't have all those names.
The left is just everybody else.
Everybody else, yeah.
The gays, the women.
The Basques, the Catalans.
Women, yep. We're all getting killed, left and right.
All right. So the political parties, the warring political parties, you know, at the time, they were faced with the difficulty of establishing a new way forward for the country.
Yes.
So in order to pave like a smooth transition from the autocratic and totalitarian regime of Franco's dictatorship to a democratic nation, the political leaders of the time decided to constitute what became known as the Pact of Forgetting.
Yeah.
The Pact of Forgetting is just incredible. Okay.
I understand you can do that for 10 years. It's just like when it becomes 30, 40, 50, it's like, come on, guys.
Yes, we can't forget anymore.
We can stop forgetting now.
Because there's, you know, there's so much.
I mean, that's how a lot of trauma is established by just shut, just push it down.
Yeah, pull it in.
Don't talk about it.
From the point of view of the ruling party, the right, the Spanish Nationalists, their greatest fear was the dissolution of Spanish state, which.
It still is.
And, you know, I, you know, I want to give them a little bit of reason in the sense that, well, there are a ton of freaking civil wars.
So, yeah, there is definitely.
And, you know, there still is.
It's a legitimate fear.
Yeah.
I mean, but at the same time, you know, it's not democratic.
And there's, you know, all those civil wars shows there are issues with the current state of things.
And forgetting, as you say, is just not going to be the solution.
So it never has been, never will be.
It's like a marriage for two people to continue living together.
They just can't forget about it.
Exactly.
You can forget about it for this evening.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's going to come out.
It'll come out in some other way.
Very true.
No, no, please do.
So they saw this as a way of moving on from the fractures created during the post, during and post the Civil War.
This pact would essentially enable the new and very delicate democracy to avoid confronting Franco's legacy directly.
The pact ensured that, quote, there were to be no prosecutions for persons responsible for human rights violations or similar crimes committed during the Francoist period.
That has been brought to the European Court of Human Rights to contest that.
Yes. So, for example, additionally, public memorials such as the Valley of the Fallen, where Franco was interred, were no longer to be used for official occasions.
And the public holiday known as, quote, Day of Victory, which was Franco's victory, came to be called Armed Forces Day to honor both the Republican and Nationalist parties of the war.
At the heart of this pact was the general consensus to suppress the hard questions concerning who would take responsibility for the war and its subsequent repression on society.
So no political or social group could be called to answer for the pain, death and destruction that the regime caused.
Some historians claim that the pact was necessary at the time to achieve a smooth transition.
But obviously, this pact has never not been controversial.
Yeah. Yeah. So which brings me to the 1977 Spanish amnesty law.
So the legal basis, because you have to have a legal basis for everything, right?
You have to have it in the laws, right? So the legal basis for the pact of forgetting was given by the 1977 Spanish amnesty law, which would pass in Parliament that year and was given royal assent.
What's royal assent? I had to look it up.
It's when the monarchy formally approves an act of the legislature.
So in modern constitutional monarchies, this process is merely a formality. But in theory, some still permit the monarch to withhold the assent of a new law, which rarely happens.
Like, yeah, yeah, go ahead and do it. You could just keep giving us money.
Yeah, exactly.
As long as you guys just keep giving us money. It's fine.
You know, like that was part of our episode. That was quite important in this in 77, like the king was really, really instrumental, right?
You know, I won't give him much credit, but a lot of people do give him credit.
I know they do. And, you know, and that's to be argued. But it is true that a big portion of the population did see his role as important.
So that assent at that point did serve its purpose.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The circumstances where, okay, for example, where this does happen, where, like, it's important, like you were just saying, for a royal assent to happen as when it's cases of critical, a critical political emergency or when it's advised by the government.
So that's what happened in this case, right? They were like, we need you to step in and like give it some sort of authority.
Two years following Franco's death on October 15th, 1977, the law was passed, which allowed for the freeing of political prisoners and the return of many who had gone into exile.
That was also 77, sorry. Yep. So the amnesty law allowed that to happen.
Not only that, but the law granted immunity to those who had participated in the execution of crimes and human rights violations during the Civil War and during the Franco dictatorship.
Essentially anything that happened before 1939 up to the death of Franco are legally to be forgotten by Spanish law.
It should be noted that the UN does not think this is cool.
And those crimes of violations of human rights should be investigated. So the UN did step in and go, wait a minute, you guys.
Did you know, I guess, I mean, you know, toothless, whatever, at least somebody's listening, maybe.
In the year 2000, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory was founded by a sociologist, Emilio Silva Barrera.
The organization arose out of his desire to locate and identify the remains of his grandfather, who was shot by Franco's troops in 1936.
With the advances in DNA technology, this was seen as a real possibility for the families who never knew what had happened to their loved ones and assumed, rightly so, that their lost relatives could be found in the many mass graves throughout the country.
The pact itself hadn't forced the topic of the Civil War to be, quote, off limits in territory for those in the arts.
So for in art, we've seen a lot of stuff come out about the Civil War, you know, there's tons of Picasso or like books, you know, all kinds of things that's not off limits.
So it's been talked about. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
So it's not that it wasn't totally, it's just like nobody never said a thing about it.
It's been, it's there. If you look into like literature or you look into the art, you know. Yeah, it's just they're not allowed to ever bring any concrete kind of actions to policy.
There are no legal consequences. Right.
So this pact did prevent any meaningful progress for those who were affected by the war or its outcome.
By 2006, two thirds of Spanish citizens were in favor of seeing a fresh investigation into the atrocities of the Civil War and the dictatorship.
So two thirds. Yeah. Yeah. Normally, you know, it's a good example, but it's the first one that comes to mind.
But recently, South Korea prohibited it was going to phase out eating dogs because the similar thing happened, you know, like 10, 20 years ago.
A lot of pressure. Like 70 percent of people were in favor of it.
Now 60 percent of people are against it. So they're like, okay, it's time to change it up.
Yeah, that kind of switch seems to happen with certain social issues.
Now I'm thinking of like gay marriage or gay rights in the U.S.
If you look, you know, two decades ago, it was like, like, maybe 30 percent of people were in favor of not even gay marriage, but like recognizing a gay couple.
And now and now it's like the opposite. Maybe 70 percent. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah.
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And it's like almost like it's only like 20 years time.
Like if you look at how Clinton talked about it, like it was like, and don't ask, don't tell policy, right.
And it was just fucking ridiculous. Yeah.
But, you know, like those things, you know, like 20 years, if there is a mismatch, society already gets really itchy about it.
Right. Just just justifiably.
So in the sense that, well, it's a whole generation 20 years.
And so it's a kid that's being born and thinks it's OK and then comes to find that the law is freaking outdated.
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like that's one thing when you're just gay, but when you've been stolen from your family and adopted and all that money transact.
What the hell? You were sold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
OK, so before I get into the next part, I think we should take a break. Sure. OK, let's do that. Let's do it.
OK, we're back. OK.
So in 2004, the Socialist Party won the election under the leadership of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
His government challenged the Pact of Forgetting.
And on October 31st of 2007, they proposed and passed the historical memory law.
The new law condemns the Franco estate and its repressive repression of the citizens.
It recognized and provided aid to the victims of the Civil War and the descendants for political, religious and ideological violence exacted on them.
So this would include the removal of iconography from public buildings and spaces that glorified the 1936 coup, the Civil War and Franco.
Except, of course, those found in religious spaces and those that were deemed to be spared for architectural or artistic purposes.
The law would reject the legitimacy of laws that were passed and trials that were conducted by the Franco estate.
Those who had left for political or economic reasons were given the right to return and reestablish their nationality as a Spanish citizen.
This right was also given to the descendants of those individuals.
And most controversially of all of the provisions passed by past was the state funded assistance in exhumations and the identification of victims whose bodies were, quote, disappeared in mass graves throughout the country.
What the law did not include was an outright prosecution for crimes committed during this era.
The passing of this law was not without its detractors, most notably the PP, the Popular Party, the conservative right.
They voted against passing the law, which they viewed as the left's attempt at diminishing the political unity that was reached in the country's transition to democracy.
Same broken record.
Moreover, they saw the passing of such a law as a type of vengeance and a way of, quote, using the Civil War as an argument for political propaganda.
As if.
However, the Republican left of Catalonia, who also voted against the new law, felt that the measures being proposed to rectify the wrongs of the dictatorship and the Civil War didn't go far enough.
So they only voted against it because they thought, no, it's not enough.
They want real prosecution, which is a valid thing, of course.
For example, they wanted to see the verdicts of political trials during the dictatorship to be overturned.
Of course, that's a minimum. I mean, I mean, I understand not wanting to like have to prosecute.
But the new legislation would declare those trials to be invalid, but they weren't overturned.
Yeah, you want to expunge the people's.
So they'd still be on record, right? Yeah.
Yeah, which is fucked up.
Another controversy at this time pertaining to the 1977 Spanish amnesty law occurred when Judge Balasar Garzón.
You heard of this guy?
Baltasar, yeah.
Baltasar Garzón. He challenged it and the pact of forgetting by saying that those who committed crimes against humanity during the Franco times were not to be granted amnesty anymore and their crimes were not subject to statute limitations.
In 2008, he began an official inquiry into the deaths of over 100,000 people as more and more relatives and descendants of victims were coming forward and demanding justice for their loved ones who were executed or missing.
Many of those discovered in mass graves were educators, business owners, farmers, ladies of a particular breed, aka were not wed in the church, for example, or simply people on the losing side of the conflict.
But in 2010, he was stopped in his efforts and was investigated by the Supreme Court for alleged abuse of power by knowingly violating the amnesty law.
Although he was subsequently absolved of these allegations, the judiciary maintained the amnesty law and then put an end to his investigations into Francoist crimes.
Yeah, because there's...
So that's 2008, 2010.
Yeah.
In 2011, the PP won the elections, the political party, the popular party, right? That's what they're called. The PP.
They won the elections and took over the government.
Many feared that they would repeal the historical memory law, which in the end they did not do.
To their credit?
Sure. They did, however, shut down the government office responsible for the exhumations and identification of victims in mass graves.
That makes sense that they weren't getting licenses like I thought, yeah.
Mariano Rajoy, the president of the party, said he didn't want to spend the money on it.
But I read that what he was willing to spend money on was the repatriation of the remains of Spanish soldiers who had fought in the Blue Division for Hitler.
Oh, yeah. He's got some nice priorities.
I thought you'd like that.
I mean, I do.
Hang on, you're Trapella.
I really do, because it confirms so many of my feelings.
So much.
Exactly.
I brought that out.
I didn't.
That's not one of my go tos.
Isn't that crazy?
But now you've got another one.
Now you've got some ammunition in here.
So recent too.
It's so convenient.
I know.
Right?
O-M-the-G.
Right?
Right.
Okay.
So, okay.
So let's bring us back to the baby snatching revelations that were in the press.
Yes.
2011.
I'm going to tell you a story of a woman who fought for justice in her case.
Let's.
Okay.
So Maria Luisa Torres gave birth to a baby girl at Santa Cristina Hospital in Madrid on March 31st, 1982.
82.
Yeah.
So what?
My sister was born.
Seven years after Franco died, right?
She was unmarried or divorced.
I'm not sure which.
At the time, and already the mother of an infant daughter.
Maria had been living with her mother who was helping her to raise her child.
When she became pregnant again, saddled with a boyfriend who couldn't give two shits about helping her financially or otherwise, and not wanting to burden her mother, she added, you know, with that added responsibility of a new child, she sought outside help.
After seeing an ad in a magazine that promoted a charity who sought to help working mothers with the care of their infants. Maria felt that she had found the help that she needed.
The Catholic run charity was operated by the daughters of charity and supervised by Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena.
At five months pregnant and in the company of her mother, Maria went and met with the social worker who was going to be her saving grace.
The social worker turned out to be Sister Valbuena, who Maria recalled as friendly and compassionate.
So I'm going to be referring to Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena as Sister Valbuena or Sister V, because let's face it, there are just way too many Maria's in this story.
Okay, because this is going to be the case in many of these stories.
Everybody's like Maria.
All of them are Maria.
Even the men. Jesus Maria.
Exactly. Maria.
I will add that it actually was semi obligatory for a woman to have Maria and her name.
Yeah, it was true. That's right.
You're right. And or just or Joseph or Joseph.
What is Joseph in Spanish?
Jose.
Jose. Yeah.
Juan Jose.
Yes. One of those had to be a biblical name.
If you wanted another name with it.
Yeah, which is connected like in it, I'm sure a lot of Spanish people don't really care.
But in the Basque Country, there were different naming traditions.
Those names were prohibited.
Yes.
And we've talked about that.
We have.
Like a cheeky soda.
I think we brought that up.
Yeah, I think some of some of our listeners are getting a picture.
Slowly, slowly, slowly.
Of course they are.
We are.
I am included.
Yeah.
Are you following?
Are you seeing a pattern?
Okay.
So she was told that upon birth, the child would be kept in a nursery that she would have to be paid for by her and that Maria could visit as much as she liked and could retrieve the child whenever she wanted.
Okay. Great deal.
Right.
So they thought.
It sounds like it.
Hang on to that chipella again.
All right.
Douglas, put your hands on your head.
Keep that chipella on.
It's very irritating.
Poor, poor people.
So it was when Maria went into labor that things got sketchy.
She had been constructed by the nun to enter the hospital through a side door, which would eliminate the need for her to register the purpose of her visit and eliminate the need to give her name.
Oh my gosh.
She was then told to ask specifically for Sister Velbuena.
A lot of douchiness.
Yep.
Escorted Maria to a private ward located on the hospital's upper floors.
And upon arrival, a mask was promptly placed over her face to sedate her.
She was then administered an injection that sped up her contractions.
And according to Maria, quote, the baby shot out in 10 minutes.
I could have bled to death.
Oh my gosh.
When Maria awoke, Sister Maria V was there to break the news that Maria's daughter had died.
Maria and her mother were in disbelief, so much so that they searched the maternity ward for their daughter and grandchild.
Seeing that these two women wouldn't be convinced, Sister V relented and told them.
I put this in quotes, but it's actually my words.
Ah, bueno. I'm sure they said that.
Exactly. It's something like this.
I actually sent the child to France to be adopted out.
Man.
In so many words, that's what she told them.
Wow.
Meanwhile, Maria had to be treated in the hospital for the following nine days due to a fallopian tube infection.
And the documents that were kept on her file for this treatment would serve great purpose to her later.
Her name, her husband's name, but OK, I have to pause here.
Her husband's name, because at the time they weren't married, they weren't married.
I didn't find any research that she was married, so maybe she was divorcing him because she did have another daughter.
Or maybe she gave this boyfriend's name to save face.
I don't know.
OK, so her address was also listed and all of the doctor's visits were noted in her medical files.
For this, you know, for the infection treatment.
Fallopian tubes, yeah.
In addition, the adoption papers that Sister V had filed were also later located,
showing that the nun had claimed the mother of the child to be unknown and the baby had been abandoned.
Classic.
In 1987, Spain's adoption laws were amended, but before then it was perfectly legal to enter the name of the adoptive mother to be listed as the baby's birth mother.
In the Franco years, the practice of removing babies from mothers whom the church and the established order deemed unsuitable
and gifting them to married couples who were considered to have the legal right to children was just business as usual for their political and religious purposes.
Yeah.
Life before DNA was different.
So, however, post-Franco in Spain's newly established democracy, this business carried on as it was turned out to be like quite lucrative.
So I have this quote in here.
The boom in cases is located mainly between 1976 and 1983.
Oh my gosh, post-Franco's death.
So it assures that the theft of babies was a business for pure money.
Yeah, well, sounds like the Catholic Church.
According to one source, they placed the price for a baby at around 1 million pesetas or 20 to 25,000 euros.
Maria's daughter, born in 1982, likely fetched this price.
Wow.
Which, I mean, if you account for inflation, that is, it's a lot of money.
I think 25,000.
Back then, it was a lot of money.
Well, I actually always look into that.
Okay, sorry.
But it's never really, it's never exact, right?
Yeah.
So whenever I put it into this thing, this website that I go to to try to figure out what that was.
So those were in today's terms then.
In today's terms or inflation or whatever.
There's a lot of different measures that they go by.
So the million pesetas would only be 6,000 when it was done.
That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But that's before inflation.
So anyway.
Anyway, so it's really hard to say, but it's still a lot of money.
It is.
Like the guy that said that his son was bought for like the price of an apartment.
Yeah, what does that even mean?
What an apartment's got to do with that.
Better to understand than a million pesetas, I'd say.
Still, that's pretty, yeah, that's a lot of money to buy an apartment, right?
Okay.
Regardless, right?
That's a lot of money.
Unbeknownst to Maria, her daughter was not being raised by a family in France, but in a suburb of Madrid.
Maria's daughter, Pilar, was brought up by a very Catholic family.
She went to Catholic schools run by nuns and grew up feeling that the cold and stifling environment wasn't really her bag.
It wasn't until the age of 15 when her parents separated that she was told about her origins by her adoptive father.
Alejandro Alcalde, Alcalde, which is mayor.
Means mayor, literally, yeah.
Set out to help his daughter find her real mother.
That's nice of him.
Together they went to pay a visit to Sister Valbuena.
Who was at the time living in her orders residential home, because she was an elderly woman at the time.
I imagine.
When Sister V was confronted by the pair, she insisted that Pilar's birth mother was a prostitute who had simply abandoned her at the hospital after giving birth.
That's probably the story she would tell everybody.
Yeah.
Your mom's a prostitute.
Forget about her.
Move on.
Your life is so much better because of me.
Traveling.
Inflating her own ego.
It might have worked in the 40s, but no longer in the 20 somethings, right?
Well, this would have been.
So the girl was 15 at the time she was born.
Now I got to go back in my notes.
It's okay.
It was in 82.
She was born.
Let somebody do the math.
82, 15.
What year was that?
97.
Good.
That was fast.
Way to go.
Way to go, Douglas.
High five.
Let's all pretend that's right.
No, I think it is.
I think it is.
So that was then.
97.
She said she was a prostitute and abandoned.
Okay.
So years later, and with the advent of Facebook, Pilar took her story to the platform.
Meanwhile, Maria, who was also on Facebook, Maria, her mother.
Yes.
Would post a birthday message on March 31st every year to her long lost daughter.
Oh, that's so nice.
And an astute journalist took notice of these matching details on the two women's profiles and brought it to their attention.
So it was a journalist that brought them together.
That's amazing.
Right?
Democracy needs journalism.
Absolutely.
Right?
After a DNA test showed a 99% chance for the two were in fact mother and daughter.
Wow.
The ladies were reunited in 2011 on a TV show.
Oh, I mean.
But better that it happens wherever.
Why not a show?
No.
But yeah.
So their story set off a wave of investigations, giving hope to other families who suspected that they were also victims of the same scam.
In a way that's really nice that it was public.
Well, that's what happens.
Right?
Yeah.
That's why journalism is very important.
Thank you, journalists.
I have to thank you again.
And a positive aspect of social media.
Yeah.
They were able to be connected through somebody else's work.
Yeah.
But.
Well, somebody saw the resemblance between the two and like.
Also.
Yeah.
And the stories, both of them probably telling their story.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Yeah.
Incredible.
Yeah.
Small thank you to Zuckeberg.
Zuckeberg.
Okay.
So many of these people came forward with stories of suspect practices when they had given birth.
When this story came out on TV, right?
After probing into the medical files at hospitals where these births took place, it was discovered that there was a suspicious
high number of twin births where the stronger of the two supposedly died.
And when the mother would insist on seeing her deceased baby, the hospital staff would produce a frozen baby corpse as proof.
I've heard about that one case.
Yeah.
That's horrible.
I remember a woman, one mother saying and it was cold and you could see, you know, that it would have been frozen or something.
Yeah.
That's horrible.
After their appearance on TV, Maria began to be referred to as Mother Courage, but she preferred the name of Mother Pain.
They respect her wishes.
I mean, Dolores is actually a name.
I know.
I can't believe that is a name.
Which literally means pain.
Yeah.
So in March of 2012, Maria Luisa Torres filed a complaint through the investigating court 47 in Madrid, which was admitted and processed by Judge Adolfo Carretero.
He found that there was a well-founded evidence to charge Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena, now in her 80s, with illegal detention for the robbery of her daughter Pilar.
The mother and daughter were scheduled to testify in April.
Meanwhile, Sister V refused to speak with the prosecution and the investigating judge, which was her right to do so.
Interesting.
Among the evidence presented to the prosecutor's office was Maria's testimony about the threats she had received from Sister Valbuena when she continued to insist that her daughter be returned to her.
She said she was told by the nun, quote, If you dare to protest, we will denounce you for adultery and your daughter will be also taken away from you.
Her living daughter or other daughter.
What a big situation.
The court also had corroborating testimonies from both mothers of stolen babies and from parents who had sought to adopt a child who claimed Sister Valbuena was at the center of this child trafficking scheme.
It was well known who one could go to to adopt a child after all efforts were made through the official channels.
Sister Maria Valbuena was known as, quote, the nun who gave birth to children.
Wow.
She even freely had given an interview to El Pais in 1980, boasting that in three years she had more than 3000 applications from parents seeking to adopt a baby.
She fulfilled all of them.
One testimony given by a set of parents who went through this illicit system.
In their testimony, they detailed how the process worked.
Maria del Carmen Rodriguez, another Maria.
She and her husband visited Sister V in 1981.
She said, quote, Sister V told us that in order to give for her to give us a child, we had to bring in another pregnant woman in exchange.
Wow.
And that she would give us the child of a mother who had been brought in by another married couple.
Right.
When I asked her why, yeah, when I asked her why I couldn't keep the one from the pregnant woman that we had brought to her, she said that they did it that way so that the mothers wouldn't have a clue who had their child and wouldn't bother looking for them later.
End quote.
Machiavellian.
Rodriguez said that she was finally able to find a young pregnant girl who wanted to give her child up for adoption and brought her to Sister V. She waited until one day the nun contacted her and said she had a child for them.
Quote, come for him tomorrow and bring the money.
It's 50,000 pesetas for childbirth expenses and quote, which they paid before taking the child home with them.
Aside from her connections at the center of Christina Hospital where Maria Torres gave birth to Pilar, Sister V also had an apartment for pregnant women in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid.
In this house, the girls who were taken in were hardly ever allowed to leave.
And as soon as they gave birth, they were gone.
Total human trafficking.
Yeah, it is.
On the rare occasions when they did leave the house, it was for checkups with a Dr. Eduardo Vela at the San Romain Ramon Clinic.
He was a close collaborator of Sister V's and everybody remember his name because we're not done with him yet.
Okay.
Maria Torres would never see her day in court after a series of lengthy delays and having never testified in her defense. Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena died just before her 88th birthday.
Aside from devastating Maria Torres and robbing her of any sense of justice, countless other victims would also miss out on seeing this nun being prosecuted for her crimes.
However, upon her death, her other victims didn't give up as they knew this wasn't a one-woman job.
They said, quote, It is clear that she did not operate alone.
The children's health death certificates were signed by doctors, not nuns.
She officially worked as a social worker in the Santa Cristina Hospital, which shows how institutionalized her practice was.
End quote. This will bring us to the next part of our story, which we're going to get into in our part two of this episode.
Okay. Where the, you know, someone else tried to get justice for this.
And then we'll look at some cases that happened in Uscadi. Yeah, here in the Basque Country.
Because, you know, after all, this is crimes of the Basque lands.
Indeed, indeed. I'm awaiting.
So let's take a break and then Goyo, I think, has a mini crime time for us.
I do. Okay. All right. Let's take a break. Okay.
We're back.
So Goyo, do you have a mini crime time for us today? Yes.
To end this episode. Yes. So this crime occurred in Deba, which is a beautiful coastal village in Gipuzkoa.
You and I've walked there together before.
This occurred absolutely worth a visit. This occurred on Sunday, December 17th of last year, 2023.
And I was in Deba on this day because we had walked from Thumaya to Deba.
Because it's part of the Camino, no? Yeah, it's part of the Camino de la Costa. Yeah. St. James's Way.
So random tidbit, I was in the town when this happened. But it's not really involved with you.
I was not involved. Luckily, I was not involved in any way, shape or form because a 75-year-old woman died from a gunshot wound,
allegedly from a gun that was fired during an authorized wild boar hunt.
The authorities say there's no doubt that it was a stray bullet from the wild boar hunt that entered through the window of her flat.
Oh my God, this is not a mini crime time. This is like a full episode. Hit her in the head. Oh my God. Causing her death hours later.
Yes. Jesus Christ. The Atanza of the Basque police force is investigating the weapons and ammunition seized from the 23 hunters who were on that hunt.
The hunt had been authorized by the provincial council, so it was a legal, I mean, it was an official thing. But it led to this unexpected tragedy.
Oh my God. When was this? This was December 17th. This year. A month and a half ago. 2023. I wouldn't call this mini crime time.
This is like full on crime time. Like she died. She died hours later. Oh my God.
Yeah. So the security minister, Yosu Ercureka, offered some details of the investigation,
stating that only six of the hunters actually fired their weapons and only two of them did so in the vicinity of this woman's home.
So it's pretty narrowed down to who probably fired the shot.
But he also stated that there's no data so far to show that the hunters exceeded the geographical limits of where the hunt was permitted.
So theoretically, they weren't too close to the housing area.
He also underscored that the Atzante doesn't consider the possibility that this was intentional. So everyone believes this was an accident.
But it is being studied as well whether one of the bullets that hit one of the boars might have gone through the boar and into the window
because there was like an entry and exit wound on one of the wild boars that was killed in the hunt.
Now that is fucked up, man. It is. It absolutely is.
Accident on accident, but still.
Yeah, but the fact that they're like shooting boars that bullets are going through and hitting going into houses.
Yeah. What kind of gun are they using?
And why are they allowing people to be shooting guns around houses?
This close. Why is this happening so close to a town? Why is that part of the delineated...
Why is it possible for a bullet to go into somebody's house and kill this lady?
Why is this in the delineated geographical area of the hunt?
I hope they at least redraw that map.
Yeah, no kidding.
But according to my sources, this is the first time a bullet from a regulated hunt has killed a person that wasn't involved in a hunt.
There have been accidents before amongst the hunters.
So I have one last thing to add real quick about the mini-crime.
So like also a priori it sounds like, well, why are they killing these poor animals?
Like what's the problem?
But these hunts have been carried out and approved.
Hunts have been carried out for many, many, many years all over Quipúscuá.
And I assume probably here in Vizcaya as well and in all of the other provinces of the Basque lands.
Because there is a huge problem with overpopulation of those animals.
And they're causing disasters for the Baserritarras, our Basque farmers.
So while I'm not one, I don't like hunting and I don't like thinking about killing animals.
Yeah, for sport.
Yeah.
But this is something that is generally accepted as something that's necessary.
Yeah.
But luckily, this is the first and only time that there's been a tragedy like this related to these approved and organized hunts.
Aside from among other hunters.
Like accidentally shot your buddy.
Brother.
That's happened a lot.
It doesn't make the news.
That doesn't matter as much as this woman.
Because you're like, well, that just happens.
I thought when Julie and I were talking about me coming to do the pod with you guys, I thought since I was in Deva, the day this happened, I thought it was an apropos mini crime time.
You were there.
I like it.
That's my mini crime time.
Maybe it was bigger than a mini, but I'm sorry for overstepping my bounds here.
I love it. Love it. Love it. Thank you, Goyo. Thank you very much.
If we get more than 10 requests to cover that, we'll do it.
Right. So that's it for today's episode.
And we bid you a good crimes of the Basque lands is written and produced by double stick.
I'm Julio Garcia.
I'm Megan Dooley.
The sound and editing for each episode by Douglas Carvalho.
I'm Megan Dooley.
Theme song written by Julie Garcia and Megan Dooley sung by the choir with no name and produced by Tom Squires podcast art by distinct signal.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at crimes of the Basque lands and contact us at crimes of the Basque lands at gmail.com with story ideas worldwide, which have a connection to the Basque country or any rave reviews.
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Until next time, Agur!