A Spanish doctor kidnapped a baby in 1969. But a court says it's too late to convict him

Ines Madrigal speaks to journalists outside a court in Madrid, Spain. Photo / AP

It wasn't until she turned 18 that Inés Madrigal learned she wasn't living with her biological parents.

Madrigal was one of possibly thousands of babies abducted in Spain during and after the rule of fascist dictator Francisco Franco.

Known as the "stolen babies," they were often taken from poor families - or families thought to oppose Franco - and given to families that, in many cases, supported the regime. This practice of abducting children and handing them off to Franco loyalists may have lasted for decades.

Madrigal, now 49, finally got some closure today when the Madrid provincial court ruled that Eduardo Vela, a gynecologist, had abducted her when she was an infant in 1969 and forged documents to make it seem that her adoptive parents had given birth to her instead.

"I'm happy because it's been proven that I was stolen. Dr Vela stole me," Madrigal said after the ruling, according to the BBC.

Vela is the first person to face trial for crimes related to the stolen babies. The court said it was "crystal clear" that Vela had forged documents and given Madrigal away, but the doctor, now 85, was acquitted because the statute of limitations had passed. Prosecutors had hoped he would be sentenced to 11 years in prison.

"Obviously I am happy because they recognise that Vela did all he did," Madrigal said outside the court. But she also said she didn't think the statute of limitations should apply because she didn't know "until 2010 that in Spain there was a network that stole and sold babies at a national level."

Madrigal first pursued charges against Vela in 2012, not long after her adoptive mother, who has since died, gave her details about Vela's role in her adoption.

She said her adoptive mother later encouraged her to pursue justice in her case. "I always say she didn't give birth to me but I was born in her heart," the Guardian reported Madrigal as having said before the trial. "She lived to look after me and see me happy."

It remains unclear exactly how many families were affected by the theft of babies in the Franco era. Some put the number at as many as 300,000. Many families have petitioned for investigations into the abductions.

The Guardian reported that although Vela said in court that he had trouble remembering details about such thefts at the Madrid clinic where he used to work, a police officer working on the case found that babies had indeed been taken there and that Vela even acknowledged burning the clinic's archives. He did not appear in court this week.

And Madrigal isn't finished. She plans to take the case to Spain's Supreme Court in the hopes of getting Vela convicted. "We're going to keep fighting," she told reporters.