A GROOM who needed his birth certificate to get married uncovered a devastating family secret.

Salvador López found out not only that he was adopted but also that he was one of up to 23 babies allegedly sold by their birth mother in a "womb for rent" child trafficking scandal.

The infants went to childless women in Majorca and Barcelona over two decades from the 1970s to 1990s.

Some of them were the birth mother's friends but most were strangers, with handovers allegedly arranged by social workers and nuns.

Salvador, now 39, had no idea he was adopted until he was preparing to get married in 2020.

He had to apply for his birth certificate, which revealed his real mother was a woman called María Rosa Santos Asensio.

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Suddenly he found himself rewriting his life from scratch, he told Catalan news site Crónica Global.

He said: "At that moment I felt a little disappointed, because I had lived a lie but, at the same time I was calm knowing that what I saw or imagined was not my invention."

He said he had previously felt rejected by some members of his adoptive family, and was puzzled at the lack of physical resemblance.

Now it made sense – and he wanted to know more about his origins.

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But it set in train a shocking series of revelations that changed his life for ever.

His adoptive parents were dead so he could not ask them.

Instead he appealed on social media for information about a woman called María Rosa who gave birth in Majorca capital Palma in 1984.

Someone wrote back claiming to have known his biological mother.

Then it emerged María Rosa had given a shocking magazine interview in the 1990s.

She admitted to being a "surrogate mother" for 19 years and giving up at least ten babies for couples to adopt.

“Aren't there people who donate an organ to someone who might need it?" she said.

"Well, I am willing to give a baby to those who cannot have it.”

She said she had been pregnant 13 times since the age of 20, with three abortions and ten live births.

She also insisted she received no "material benefit" and that "no one is going to think this is a market".

When Salvador dug deeper it emerged her motive may not have been entirely selfless.

Another group of adopted people were already investigating an alleged baby trafficking plot involving a clinic, an adoption association and a convent in Barcelona.

In one case the adoptive family paid one million pesetas for their baby.

"I really didn't want to know anything about her, but I did want to know about the other children she sold," Salvador said in October.

Brothers reunited

He had learned he had nine brothers and sisters – but now believes there could be more than twice as many.

After his story was published, another sibling contacted Crónica Global earlier this month.

Hazael González, 29, who lives in Palma, revealed he knows of at least four more siblings in Majorca and one in Barcelona, in addition to Salvador.

In total, his investigations have revealed María Rosa sold 23 babies.

The site put Hazael and Salvador in touch, and they spoke for the first time last week by video call.

The resemblance between them was immediately obvious.

"I have seen my face in another person," Salvador said on the call.

Hazael later told Ultima Hora: "The first impression was that, from the face, we are the same, in addition to political ideology and tastes.

"Now our intention is to be brothers, to make up for lost time.”

He added of María Rosa: "I was her last pregnancy, and my adoptive mother met her in Palma as a result of a mutual friend.

"I was born in a clinic where it was common for nuns to deliver babies.

"I know this lady is alive, but I don't want to see her, I just want to find the rest of my brothers."

Last week we told how a woman in Canada went for a breast cancer test and discovered she was sold at birth along with seven brothers and sisters.

DNA results led Reissa Spier, 67, to uncover a family tree with siblings across Canada and the USA.

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Meanwhile a woman in Georgia, US, also discovered she was sold as a baby on the black market.

Jane Blasio began a search for her secret relatives after small error in records prompted the revelation she was adopted.

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