More families reporting 'disappearing' babies

LA LÍNEA (Agencies) Regular readers will know that we have been following developments on this story, so it may not come as a surprise that more reports are surfacing about babies that 'disappeared' under suspicious circumstances from La Línea Hospital in the 1960s, '70s and '80s. The latest case involves a mother who gave birth to a boy on December 12, 1981. The child's would-be sister, Belén, says that her mother is deaf and now has Alzheimer's disease, so no longer remembers the circumstances. "She always told us that her baby had been stolen," says Belén, adding that her mother was only told that the child had been dead a month before she gave birth.>

Although the couple had been expecting a boy, and the mother had been told that it was aboy, documentation at the hospital says it was a girl. "My father was told that the baby had been dead a month and it was better for him not to see it," says Belén. The hospital took charge of the burial, and all her father saw was a white coffin (traditional colour for children) that was buried at the cemetery in La Línea, in a common grave known as El Patio de los Moros ('the Moors' courtyard').

Belén was told, too, that her mother had fallen down two weeks before giving birth and had gone to the hospital for a check-up, and was told the baby was fine and had a good heartbeat. "It's impossible that the baby was dead inside, then," she says.

Belén and her sister have checked with the cemetery and there is no registration of any child burials in December, 1981. "We had heard that there were cases of such things in the 1960s, and then some came up for the 1980s," she adds. In fact there are over 20 similar cases in La Línea currently being investigated by the National Police, as well as several more that are emerging gradually in other parts of Andalucía and Spain.