My most personal interview
Published in El Observatorio no. 9 under the title “The battle for my identity”, this interview goes through my personal, family and legal history: the search for my origins, the meeting with my biological sister, the DNA test, the recovery of my biological parentage and the harm caused by identity theft and fraudulent adoption.
The interview came out of a visit to the Pinoduero Pre-employment Workshop in Tudela de Duero, where I shared my story, presented my book and explained the process of searching for my origins, restoring my identity and obtaining judicial recognition.
It is one of the most complete and personal interviews I have given so far. It includes not only the documentary and legal facts of the case, but also the lived experience of the search, loneliness, psychological harm, lack of recognition and the emotional weight of having had to reconstruct my own identity.
What this interview contains
The interview explains how I discovered that I had been adopted, how I began searching for my origins and how I found documents, silences, contradictions and traces of a network linked to the Maria Madre Association of Bilbao.
It also addresses the role of Mercedes Herrán de Gras, my initial registration as a foundling, the missing or destroyed documentation, the irregular civil registration, the search for my biological family and the process that finally confirmed through DNA my bond with my sister Amaia.
The piece places my case within a broader reality: stolen babies, irregular adoptions, concealment of parentage, identity substitution and the lack of effective reparation for victims.
An interview about identity, parentage and truth
The central axis of the interview is identity. Not as an abstract idea, but as a material, legal, family and biographical reality. The interview shows what happens when a person grows up registered under an identity that does not correspond to their origins, with false parentage and with a family history built on concealment.
In my case, the search for identity was not a matter of personal curiosity or an isolated private need. It was a documentary, biological and legal search. It involved reconstructing my birth, my civil registration, my adoption, my baptism, my relationship with the Maria Madre Association of Bilbao and the biological bond with my family of origin.
That is why this interview has special value: it makes it possible to speak about identity not only as a right, but as a concrete battle against the administrative, family and social disappearance of a person.
The search for origins
The interview recounts the beginning of the search, the first clues, the contradictory documents and the difficulty of moving forward when institutions do not preserve, do not provide or do not recognise all the information needed to reconstruct a personal history.
That search revealed central elements of my case: the registration as a foundling, the later adoption, the disappearance of the judicial adoption file, the contradictions between civil and religious documents, and the trace of organised intermediation around the Maria Madre Association of Bilbao.
The search was neither linear nor clean. It was a slow reconstruction built from partial documents, incomplete archives, family silences, institutional refusals and biological evidence.
The meeting with my biological family
One of the central moments of the interview is the meeting with my biological sister Amaia and the confirmation through DNA testing of our family bond. That result did not only confirm a biological relationship: it dismantled the civil and family identity that had been imposed on me since childhood.
The interview also places that meeting in its human dimension. It was not only about finding names or surnames, but about recovering an essential part of my own history: father, mother, sister, lineage, family memory and belonging.
That biological recognition later became one of the bases of the legal process that ended with the recognition of my paternal biological parentage with full legal effects.
Fraudulent adoption and identity theft
The interview does not present adoption as a simple private family event. It places it within a context of irregular adoptions, concealment of parentage and identity substitution.
In my case, adoption did not repair a situation of abandonment. It concealed a separation from origin, consolidated false parentage and produced a civil identity that did not correspond to my biological history.
That is why I speak of identity theft. Because it was not only a matter of changing surnames, but of legally erasing an origin, a family, a history and a truth that belonged to me.
The Maria Madre Association of Bilbao
The interview connects my story with the Maria Madre Association of Bilbao, an organisation linked to irregular adoptions and the transfer of newborns and children in the context of the Franco dictatorship and Spain’s transition to democracy.
The interview mentions the role of Mercedes Herrán de Gras and the functioning of a structure that cannot be understood as a sum of isolated cases. My case forms part of a broader reality in which pregnant women, newborn babies, adoptive families, religious institutions, civil registries and courts appear within the same system of parentage substitution.
This page should also make that connection clear and findable: stolen babies, Maria Madre Association, Bilbao, illegal adoptions, false parentage, identity theft and the right to truth.
Judicial recognition and partial restitution
The interview was published after a judgment recognised my paternal biological parentage. That judicial recognition does not erase the harm caused, but it has enormous historical, legal and personal value.
The judgment made it possible to legally recover a parentage that had been erased by adoption. It also made it possible to state publicly that my biological identity was not a fantasy, a suspicion or an emotional claim, but a proven reality recognised by a court.
The interview therefore does not speak only about the past. It also speaks about restitution, partial reparation and the right of a person to be legally registered with the parentage that belongs to them.
Psychological harm, loneliness and lack of recognition
One of the values of this interview is that it allows me to speak about the harm that rarely appears in judicial documents. Identity theft does not produce only a registry problem. It produces disorientation, biographical rupture, shame, loneliness, loss of trust and a deeply damaged relationship with one’s own history.
The interview includes that human dimension: the weight of not having known who I was, the impact of discovering the falsity of the parentage, the emotional cost of searching for years and the added violence of having to prove again and again facts that affected the very centre of my identity.
It also shows the lack of social and institutional recognition towards victims of irregular adoptions and stolen babies. It is not enough to find the truth: that truth must then be recognised, registered, named and repaired.
Main topics
- Search for origins and reconstruction of personal identity.
- Fraudulent adoption, identity theft and biological parentage.
- Maria Madre Association of Bilbao and the network of irregular adoptions.
- Mercedes Herrán de Gras and intermediation networks in adoptions.
- Initial registration as a foundling, false parentage and contradictory documentation.
- Meeting with the biological family and confirmation through DNA testing.
- Psychological harm, loneliness, institutional silence and lack of recognition.
- Judicial ruling, partial restitution of identity and the right to truth.
- Stolen babies, democratic memory and reparation for victims.
Documentary and personal value
This interview has documentary value because it publicly summarises an essential part of my case: the search, the evidence, the judicial recognition and the historical dimension of identity theft produced within the system of irregular adoptions in Spain.
But it also has special personal value. It is not a cold or merely informative interview. It was made from a local, community and human space, with questions that made it possible to speak about aspects that rarely appear in judicial texts or news reports.
That is why I consider it my most personal interview: because it does not reduce my story to a legal case, but allows the human journey to be seen of someone who had to reconstruct his identity after a life built on false parentage.
Why this page accompanies the PDF
The magazine PDF preserves the original document. This page has another function: to make the interview understandable, findable and indexable within my own web archive.
An interview published inside a PDF magazine can be difficult to find for search engines and for many people interested in the case. That is why this page does not replace the PDF, but accompanies it, contextualises it and allows its main contents to be discovered without depending solely on the indexing of the original document.
The page acts as an entry point to the interview and as a documentary record within the press section of gomezaldaz.com.
Read the full issue
The interview appears on pages 3 to 10 of issue no. 9 of El Observatorio, a free biannual magazine produced at the Pinoduero Pre-employment Workshop in Tudela de Duero.
The link opens the full magazine PDF in a new tab.