The Lost Children

As Spain heads towards the 70th anniversary of the end of the 1936-1939 civil war – questions are being asked over the fate of the children snatched from Republican families.

They were seized during the early years of General Francisco Franco's right-wing dictatorship that followed the conflict, which continues to divide Spanish society.

A 1940 decree allowed the state to take children into custody if their "moral education" was at risk.

Firm numbers are hard to come by due to the poor state of Spanish archives and a reluctance by the government, until recently, to probe the civil war era – which some historians estimate claimed as many as half a million lives on both sides – and its immediate aftermath.

But Casanova said up to 30,000 children were registered as being in state custody at some point during the 1940s and 1950s, raised mostly by religious orders.

Casanova: "All of these children under state guardianship were not stolen. But in certain cases they were kidnapped and illegally adopted, their identity was stolen and they were given to other families."

Full Article and Source:
Where are the ‘lost children’ of the Franco regime?