Long Lost Family fans are in shock after Tuesday’s premiere of the latest episode of the ITV series investigating Spain’s historic baby trafficking scandal.
Long Lost Family: Spanish Baby Scandal sheds light on the plight of British and Spanish mothers whose babies were stolen at birth as part of an elaborate and far-reaching operation run by doctors, nurses and priests under the reign of General Franco.
The one-hour special presented by Davina McCall features the stories of Ruth Appleby, a 61-year-old Briton from Yorkshire, as well as Spaniard María Elena and her mother Ana, both living in London.
Ruth and Ana are among hundreds of thousands of women who believe their babies were cruelly taken from them at birth. In both cases, doctors at Spanish hospitals told them that their newborns had died.
Both Ana and Ruth believe that the children were later sold to other couples.
The hard-hitting special sparked disbelief and horror among viewers, who called the Spanish baby scandal, which spanned three decades, absolutely “heartbreaking” in messages posted on X/Twitter.
“Investigate the Spanish baby scandal,” wrote one X user. ‘I’m watching the Long Lost Family special now. Those bastards have been stealing babies for so long!
“Pure evil.”
Long Lost Family: Spanish Baby Scandal investigates the plight of British and Spanish mothers caught up in Spain’s historic baby trafficking scandal. Briton Ruth Appleby and her ex-husband Howard, a fellow Briton who worked in publishing, were living in the northern city of La Coruña when she gave birth to their daughter Rebecca.

Ruth, pictured with Davina McCall, contacts the producers of ITV’s Long Lost Family to try to uncover the truth of what happened to Rebecca all those years ago.
Another comment read: ‘This episode of Long Lost Family is really shocking!’
A third user wrote: “I am stunned by tonight’s Long Lost Family show. Just horrible.’
“How heartbreaking this Long Lost Family special is, what a heartbreaking and tragic scandal, and I’m sorry to everyone affected.”
“I hope they get the answers and justice they deserve,” said another message about the ITV show.
Unfortunately, hundreds of mothers like Ruth are still searching for the truth of what happened to their children all those years ago, and the Yorkshire native is relentless in her search for answers and responsibility.
By sharing her story on Long Lost Family, Ruth hopes the publicity will spark renewed national and international interest in the Spanish baby scandal that changed her life forever.
“The important thing is the truth and knowing what really happened to my daughter,” Ruth told FEMAIL exclusively.




The hard-hitting special sparked disbelief and horror among viewers, who called the Spanish baby scandal, which spanned three decades, absolutely “heartbreaking” in messages posted on X/Twitter.
‘If she died, they should be able to prove it, and then I can start to find closure.
‘And if it’s not right, what happened?’
It’s a question Ruth will have asked herself every day for three decades, replaying the day she gave birth to Rebecca while agonizing over all the ominous signs that something was terribly wrong.
Ruth and her ex-husband Howard, a fellow Briton who worked in publishing, were living in the northern city of La Coruña when she became pregnant.
“The pregnancy was absolutely idyllic,” she recalls fondly. ‘I had no complications. It was a dream pregnancy.’
However, two weeks after her due date, when she had not yet given birth, Ruth was admitted to the Teresa Herrera Maternal and Child Hospital where, almost immediately, a series of strange and suspicious situations arose.
Unusually, it was not until two days later, on December 2, 1992, that she was induced.
The day before he had a disturbing experience; Ruth overheard one of the nurses telling a patient with a difficult pregnancy to “be careful because otherwise your baby will die.”
“Then she looked at me and said, ‘As if this lady’s baby was going to die,'” Ruth continued. “It was strange, but I put it down to the fact that I was a grumpy old lady, it was Friday and I wanted to get work done.”

After what happened, Ruth fell into depression for many months, and for some time she did not want to try to have another baby.
At 8 p.m., two nurses gave her an injection that they explained was morphine, a drug that can be harmful to the fetus.
Finally, the baby was born with Ruth under general anesthesia at 1:20 in the morning. Howard went to see the baby at daycare.
‘He looked good; perfect. I was elated,” Ruth recalled in a 2013 interview with the Daily Mail.
At 4:30 a.m., Howard received a call telling him to return to the hospital. When she arrived, she was informed that her daughter had died from heart problems and that she could not see her because the autopsy had already been performed.
When Ruth arrived at 7:30 a.m., she says she was told the baby was fine. However, Howard came to her bedside and broke the news that Rebecca was dead.
Ruth didn’t even get the chance to hold her baby.
“My whole world collapsed around me,” he said. “It was very, very difficult when I look back on it because it was so unexpected.
“There were no complications and there just didn’t seem to be any reason for it.

Ruth had what she was told was her baby’s body cremated, a decision she says she now regrets.
“And it was devastating.”
After Ruth was released from the hospital, they were informed that Rebecca had been buried in a local cemetery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Ruth suffered from depression for many months and for a long time did not feel ready to try for another baby. Finally, in 1995, she gave birth to Rosie, followed by Benjy, in 2001. Howard and Ruth separated, although they remain on good terms, and Ruth and the children returned to Britain in 2006.
In 2010, he decided to cremate Rebecca’s remains and bring them back to Britain. It was this decision, and its botched execution, that first led her to reevaluate the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s birth and death.
He flew to La Coruña and, with a Spanish lawyer, witnessed the exhumation of the baby’s coffin.
A crematorium had provided a box to place the coffin, but it proved too large to fit. The cemetery workers took a crowbar and opened the coffin to move the remains into the box. Ruth tried not to look, but she couldn’t help but see the contents.
There was no way the remains inside the coffin belonged to a newborn baby.
“It was also much larger than I expected, more like the skeleton of a small child,” he told the Daily Mail. “I was so traumatized by what I saw that I went ahead with the cremation.

Like Ruth, several mothers were told that their firstborn had died during or shortly after childbirth.
“Now I deeply regret it.”
Then, after five decades of repression, the Spanish babies scandal came to light in 2011, when it was revealed that up to 300,000 Spanish babies were stolen from their parents and sold for adoption.
Like Ruth, several mothers were told that their firstborn had died during childbirth or shortly after.
In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant they were seen as more suitable parents.
Ruth is the only British woman to be involved in the scandal, and 14 years later she became suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Rebecca’s ‘death’ in 1992.
Last year, she decided to contact the producers of the ITV show Long Lost Family after a co-worker told her about the British show fronted by Davina, which brings together family members who have never met with the help of tests. of DNA.
“Most of the cases I know of in Spain in which families have been reunited are due to DNA,” he said.
‘There are one or two where the information has been provided through a third party, but the vast majority is DNA. So I thought: it’s the ideal opportunity and I’ll try it.’

Mothers like Ana, who believes that her twin babies were stolen after giving birth in a Madrid hospital in 1958

Ana and her daughter Marie-Elena live together in Clapham, south London. Marie-Elena contacted the program on her mother’s behalf.

Ana, 93 years old, knows that there is no real hope that justice will be done. In this image, she points to a family photograph in which her twin babies are missing.
The final episode of Long Lost Family will track Ruth’s dogged search for the truth, culminating in her decision to undergo a DNA test in hopes of reuniting with Rebecca.
However, the chances of getting real justice are “virtually non-existent.”
If she is alive, Rebecca would now be 32 years old and would have grown up without her real parents.
Despite the unlikelihood of Ruth being reunited with her firstborn, she refuses to give up hope.
‘You never know, there might even be someone who says, “Wait, doesn’t that look like you?”‘
Long Lost Family Special: The Spanish Baby Scandal is on ITV1 at 9pm on Tuesday 21 January.