An elderly Spanish doctor escaped punishment on Monday in the country’s first “stolen babies” trial, despite a court finding him guilty of taking a newborn baby from her mother for illegal adoption under the Franco dictatorship.
The Madrid court ruled that Eduardo Vela had seized Ines Madrigal from her biological mother in 1969, but said he could not be legally convicted because she waited too long to file a complaint against him. Madrigal is one of thousands of babies removed from their mothers — who were told their children had died — and adopted during and after General Francisco Franco’s 1939-1975 rule, in what became a nationwide scandal.