Up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption over a period of five decades, a new investigation reveals. The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.
Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal. Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth. But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial.
In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents. Official documents were forged so the adoptive parents’ names were on the infants’ birth certificates.
Catalonia firefighters were starting fires rather than putting them out this week during a demonstration held in Barcelona. The emergency workers clashed with riot police while protesting over austerity cuts in the recession hit Catalonian capital.
Hundreds of firefighters, sporting yellow helmets and red jackets, grappled with police amid concerns over the latest proposed budget cuts. They say any further reductions in staff and spending would put the ‘safety of workers and the people of Catalonia’ at risk.
Thousands of Spaniards have staged a large protest rally in Madrid, calling for the abdication of the country’s scandal-stricken monarchy.
Spanish protesters on Sunday took to the streets in the capital, Madrid, chanting slogans such as “Tomorrow, Spain Will Be Republican,” and waving thousands of red, gold and purple Republican flags. The demonstration was organized to commemorate the country’s Second Republic, which was established on April 14, 1931, and was followed by 40 years of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco after a 1936-39 civil war.
“Considering the current situation in Spain, what we need is a republic, and to put an end to the plundering by the Bourbons,” said a young protester, Anabel Galiano, referring to Spain’s royal house. Veronica Ruiz, another protester, also said, “Nobody elected the king,” adding, “We want a referendum. It would be the fair and democratic way to find out what the people want.”
Pro-independence parties are now at the helm in Spain's Basque Country, while elections in Catalonia could bring about even more separatist forces to the forefront.
Rates of suicide and depression are on the rise in Spain as the unemployment figures there hit a record high as Europe struggles to contain its debt crisis. New figures show that one-in-four Spanish workers are now without a job. Only Greece has a higher unemployment rate in the European Union (EU).
But as austerity measures bite, there is growing concern that the cuts are taking a more worrying toll. Health groups say there has been a sharp rise in mental health problems at the same time that welfare services are being cut back.
And the Red Cross says a growing number of Europeans are now relying on food aid. Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull visited a charity-run soup kitchen in a hard-hit suburb of Madrid where hunger is a very real symptom of Spain's economic crisis. "Not long ago mainly poor immigrants sat down to lunch at these tables. Now an equal number of Spaniards does as well," he says.
“Independent Catalonia? Over my dead body and those of many other soldiers.” It was with these words that on August 31, retired infantry lieutenant-colonel Francisco Alaman Castro referred to the possibility of an independent Catalonia. And he added: “We will not make it easy. Although the lion seems to be sleeping, they have no interest in provoking it too much, because it has already given enough proof of its ferocity over the centuries. These plebs are not up to much, if we know how to confront them.”
In the current verbiage that some politicians have adopted, these statements are not the only ones that we might call “undemocratic,” “putschist” and “anti-system.” After the demonstration on September 11, the UPyD spokesperson, Rosa Díez, called on the government to suspend the autonomy of Catalonia if the region used money from central government aid “to finance its secession.” Not to be outdone, the MEP (representing the Popular Party, in power in Madrid) and vice-president of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal Quadras, requested that a brigadier-general, preferably from the Civil Guard, take charge of the “Mossos de Esquadra” to curb the independence process.
The El Mundo newspaper, in its editorial of September 27, demanded from the government “a penal response to the challenge launched by Artur Mas” who has called for a referendum on self-determination in Catalonia. El Mundo urged the government to amend the Criminal Code to “punish by imprisonment any call for an illegal referendum.” And for good measure, the extremist “Reconversion,” platform, whose leaders are Alejo Vidal Quadras and José Antonio Ortega Lara, demanded that if such a referendum were to be held the government place Catalonia under tutelage, on the basis of articles 161.2 and 155.1 and 2 of the Constitution.
And that’s not all. The Spanish Military Association (AME), composed of former members of the army, has threatened Catalan president Artur Mas with a Council of War and has warned those who promote “the breaking-up of Spain” that they will have to answer before a military court on charges of “high treason”. Nothing more than that! It speaks volumes about the present situation when a conservative politician such as Artur Mas, enmeshed to the marrow of his bones with the powers of finance, especially with the La Caixa and Aberti banks, who is leader of a party as un-subversive as the CiU elicits such reactions. What will happen then when it comes to someone on the left, who is opposed to the interests of the employers and is a sincere defender of the right to self-determination?
Spanish police have fired rubber bullets and charged protesters in central Madrid after a huge demonstration against economic crisis measures. Thick smoke hung in the air early on Friday from plastic bins set alight by protestors chased by police, who hit them with batons when some tried to reach the heavily-guarded parliament at the end of a mostly peaceful march.
AFP reporters at the scene said dozens of protesters lingered, some throwing bottles at police, near the Puerta del Sol, the big square at the heart of the city where a march of hundreds of thousands wound up late Thursday. A police official said that officers arrested seven people and six others were injured. Earlier, tens of thousands of public employees, trade union members and other Spaniards have marching in 80 Spanish cities to protest the latest batch of austerity measures approved by the government.
The ruling conservative Popular Party used its majority in parliament to push through the measures on Thursday. They include a rise in sales taxes and a wage cut for civil servants. Workers yelled in anger branding the crisis measures "robbery".
Spain's 74-year-old king came under scathing criticism Sunday for going on an expensive elephant hunting trip in Botswana amid the nation's deep financial woes. Making matters worse, an accident on the trip sent King Juan Carlos into surgery. Doctors said Sunday that he was recovering well after a hip replacement but would not be able to resume full duties for more than a month.
Tomas Gomez, Madrid's regional Socialist party leader, said the time had come for the head of state to choose between his public responsibilities "and an abdication that would allow him to enjoy a different lifestyle."' Spanish newspapers were filled with accounts of how hunting trips to Botswana, where Juan Carlos fell, cost more than most Spaniards earn in a year. El Pais, Spain's leading newspaper, said the cost to arrange a hunting trip in Botswana to kill an elephant usually comes in at (EURO)44,000 ($57,850), about twice the country's average annual salary.
An 80-year-old nun has become the first person to be accused of baby snatching in the scandal over the trafficking of newborns in Spanish hospitals. Sister María Gómez has been formally named as a suspect in the investigation into one of more than 1,500 cases of suspected illegal trafficking of babies who were stolen, sold or given away by adoption over four decades until the 1980s.
Last year, as hundreds of alleged cases of baby snatching began to emerge, Torres's other two daughters set out to find their lost sister. In July a TV programme put the families in contact and paid for DNA tests. Campaigners are demanding a government inquiry into the scandal. They claim that networks of doctors, nurses and nuns who stole and sometimes sold babies were allowed to operate freely in many parts of Spain up until the early 1980s.
A campaign that started with an alleged 261 victims in January 2011 has since seen more than 1,500 complaints lodged at court houses around the country. It appears that what began as a system for removing babies from families deemed politically dangerous by the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco allegedly evolved into an illicit business that targeted single mothers and the poor. In one Madrid clinic where Gómez worked it is alleged that doctors kept a baby's corpse to show to mothers as proof that their child had died.
Spain's top court has convicted judge Baltasar Garzon in an illegal phone-tapping case and suspended him from the legal profession for 11 years, according to a court official.
Garzon, 56, who became internationally well known for his attempts to extradite Chile's former ruler, Augusto Pinochet, was found guilty of ordering illegal recordings of conversations between suspects in a corruption case and their lawyers.
Human rights groups and many Spanish supporters of Garzon view the accusations as attacks on Garzon for his investigation, launched in 2008, into alleged crimes against humanity committed by Spain’s nationalist government during the 1936-39 civil war.
The supreme court said in a statement on Thursday that Garzon had been suspended from the bench for 11 years, which, given his age, could effectively end his career. Garzon acted arbitrarily in ordering jailhouse phone tapping of conversations between detainees and their lawyers, the court said. It said his actions "these days are only found in totalitarian regimes". The Switzerland-based International Commission of Jurists condemned the supreme court verdict as "deplorable". It said Garzon had been prosecuted simply for doing his job.
Javier Martinez, the archbishop of Grenada, Spain is in hot water after saying during his Christmas speech that it is OK to rape women who had an abortion. According to the Bishop, Hitler’s and Stalin’s acts against humanity are not as bad as a woman who had an abortion and that makes it perfectly alright for any man to abuse such a woman’s body without limitations because she committed sin as if she had the right to do that. The bishop stated that the church will not budge from its decision that abortions are a great sin against God’s will and should not be tolerated.
Pope Benedict XVI was asked to comment on the bishop’s statement but thus far the head of church has remained silent. No word on the church possibly taking sanctions against Archbishop Javier Martinez.
It is no surprise that the Catholic Church has once again been caught in yet another child trafficking scheme - this time in Spain.
The Protect Your Children Foundation is keeping track and exposing the organized crime of the Catholic Church so far in order to alert and warn the nations. The Catholic Church has murdered over 50,000 native children in Canada at Residential schools administered by nuns, 500,000 children stolen by nuns in Catholic Mother-Baby homes in Australia, another 500,000 in Canada. Not to mention more than 30,000 women tortured and abused in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and more than 30,000 children abused in the Catholic residential schools of Ireland - to name a few.
No longer can the nations deny that these are isolated cases. It is obvious that the organization known as the Catholic Church is the worst criminal organization in existence, utilizing the Lord's name to gain trust and commit crimes against humanity.
Thousands of Spaniards in central Madrid have defied a ban on their protest camp and continued their open-air sit-in. Spain's electoral board had ruled that the gathering could not continue into the weekend.
It argued the protest could unduly influence voters taking part in local and regional elections across the country on Sunday. The decision - and the deadline - were met with jeers in Puerta del Sol, where thousands gather every evening - and hundreds have been camping out for a week now.
Dubbed the "Spanish revolution", the protest began with a march through Madrid on Sunday, led by young Spaniards angry at mass unemployment, austerity measures and political corruption. It turned into a spontaneous sit-in on the square in Sol, which organisers say has now been mirrored in 57 other cities.
