Enrique Vila (birthplace of St. Elizabeth House, Valencia, 1965) is the lawyer for the National Association of People Affected by Adoption Irregular (Add), which leads the These legal battle to uncover the plot to steal your babies across Spain from the Franco era and the decade of the nineties. Vila knows what he speaks and he has told in his second book, 'Stolen Lives' because he was adopted. When discovered, aged 23, began looking for his biological parents, and even though she has done twice the DNA test with potential candidates to be his mother, has not yet found.
- How many abducted children are we talking?
"We're overwhelmed. By now, everyone knows someone who is affected and it's very difficult to calculate, but I dare to speak of some 300,000 cases.
- How much was paid for a baby?
-The highest amount with which I found was a million pesetas and the other day a gentleman saying he had paid three million years eighties. Because this occurred well into the nineties.
"There are many people who considered incredible that the theft will continue until then.
"Well spent. He spent the other day some parents recognize that in 1986, when they went to adopt her daughter, were found with brokers who offered them the possibility to buy it openly. It was 1986. It was established practice was declining in the mid-nineties. Remember that in January 2011, shortly before the collective complaint lodged Add, were arrested several intermediaries in Tenerife who were going to sell to a child. In that case, the mother was a homeless man who consented, but no longer a crime. Therefore, today, babies are still buying, but not with such intensity.
-A legal reform ended the impunity of physicians.
"Yes." In 1987 Civil Code was amended in terms of reception, so that further intervention was the administration. As Welfare had more weight, doctors were less likely to move. It is for this reason that the practice decreases after that time.
- What protocol should follow someone when you communicate your baby has died?
"Today it is virtually impossible that such thefts occur due to identification bracelets were placed both baby and mother. Or the child's footprint. Now I doubt that happens, because the protocols of public and private hospitals are absolutely safe. You can have absolute certainty that the child actually died.
-Speech biggest scandal of the Western democracies.
"No doubt. By the number of people coming out, is an absolute scandal. I do not know anything like it. In Australia happened to aboriginal children in his day and the government had to apologize. And he says that in Catholic Ireland could also happen, but in this case we are talking about a sale of people open, habitual, in a democracy. Something awful.
"A sale in which the Church is in many cases.
"No doubt. Not the institution, but some nuns and priests. Specific individuals. Not that participate or would enhance the Catholic Church, but church members were involved in these gangs. While turning a blind eye or give your express consent.
-A plot of repression dissociate Franco.
"Even if given as a form of repression of women with children left, then stopped and political interest remained the purely economic. We're talking about a multimillion dollar business. Very high amounts were paid amounting to what it was worth a flat.
- Is it a mafia connected throughout the national territory?
"Yes. It's a mafia that operated throughout the country. Very clearly, too, because children who had just robbed at points far from the country. Buyers had contact with clinics throughout Spain, where he was provided children.
-In Asturias, nine cases are already in the hands of the prosecution. Are the crimes they have not prescribed?
-not prescribed. That will be a big legal battle and although there are legal opinions for all tastes, are continuing offenses. The only defense left for the criminals is to apply the prescription and, finally, do not fall upon them the force of law by a mere technicality. But these people are alive, children are registered as false and such crimes must be pursued. Plead limitation would seem to me now legally embarrassing.
"And they are alive who committed these crimes.
"Sure. There will be many pressures for this to be forgotten, but the prosecution has already said that there are facts constituting the offense. The problem is that in Spain can apply the prescription and may be a person who has murdered someone walking down the street. At least, that we know who they are. If we have the misfortune of crimes that can not be punished because they have spent some years at least, that we know who did and who were lucky enough to escape, but I understand that they can judge yet.
- Can you trust that appear seekers?
"With the movement of DNA data I understand that, yes, but from a legal point of view is difficult to draw any thread because we do not know what the origin of children. A false unless parents confess and say what city they bought and from which clinic. Then we can find the women who gave birth there in that time. But there are many people who die without ever knowing it was a stolen child. People who have no reason to suspect, not a single document to prove it. There are those who have died since unknowingly.
