Garzón opens the door: The stolen children of the franquismo.
Fernando Berlín the author of this blog, is the director of Radiocable.com and participates in various media in Spain.
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The decision of judge Baltasar Garzón to withdraw from the cause against the franquismo opens different and new fronts. Now it will be the Spanish regional tribunals who must investigate the disappearances and the exhumation of burial grounds. If the situation becomes polemic, it could end up in the hands of the Supreme Tribunal of justice, and he will see himself obligated to take a position publicly.
Garzón has also opened unexpected doors about the subject: the one about the children stolen from their republican families and given for illegal adoption to families of the franquismo, a theme absolutely taboo in Spain.
Here, the book and documentary, ??The Lost Children of the Franquismo? approaches the subject, even though there is no exact data on the numbers of the people that suffered the kidnapping of their children. The Associations for the Historic Memory believe it could be ??thousands.?
This situation is not trivial. In Argentina a similar initiative was the one to overthrow all of the military attempts to refugee in an amnesty. The situation converted into a ram that opened new judicial ways and provoked a huge social reflexion. Still today, there are several initiatives still looking for the sons of the disappeared, even in the theaters.
In Spain, ??Who knows where?, a TV program by Paco Lobatón who looked for disappeared people, received many ??petitions from children separated by the war, that looked for their origin, their real family,? even though in strict ??kidnapping? terms, is the first time that anyone has heard about this topic, according to Lobatón himself. This drives one to think that, if it happened, many children never knew about their situation, even until this day.