Spain under pressure over 'lost children'

SPANISH provincial courts are under increasing pressure to investigate government archives showing the right-wing regime of General Francisco Franco waged a campaign to take away the children of their enemies.

As part of an unprecedented ruling last year that accused Franco's forces of crimes against humanity, Spain's best-known judge, Baltasar Garzon, called for an investigation into the cases of people known as "the lost children of the Franco regime". The goal was to educate the children to embrace Roman Catholicism and support the regime.

He bowed out of the case, but is pressing provincial courts to move ahead with an inquiry.

Historians and victims' associations say hundreds of children were taken from families who had supported Franco's Republican opponents during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 or who were suspected of ties to left-wing groups. The children were adopted or sent to religious schools and state-run homes.

Some were baptised with new names, their birth records hidden or destroyed, they say. Others, sent into exile during the war by the Republicans and brought back by Franco, were given new identities.