Roberto Bustos Morales, 73, claims he spent a decade working without pay on a farm in Viu de Llevata, in Alta Ribagorça, after the Casa Sant Josep of Tarragona handed him over as a minor under the identity of Andrés Muñoz Alcolea. The transfer was made in the 1960s through temporary foster care linked to the Francoist Tutelary Court.
The contradiction that his case drags appears in the documents themselves and in the conflicting accounts of those who participated in that delivery. Bustos maintains that it was never an adoption nor a family life, but work from dawn to night on the block, while the foster mother defends that everything was legal and that they treated him as a son.
From the residence of Castejón de Sos, in Ribagorça, Bustos places the beginning of his departure from the orphanage when he was ten or eleven years old. "They came to take me out of the orphanage when I was ten or eleven years old. In February I turned 73, so do the math on how much time has passed," he states.
Roberto Bustos says he worked with 50 cows without salary or school at first
Bustos recounts that, already in Viu de Llevata, he took on continuous tasks in livestock farming and was completely in charge of the family for food and clothing. He did not receive a salary, contract, or economic compensation during that period.
His description of the daily routine points to days that started at dawn and stretched until night. He says he milked about 50 cows, fed them, cleaned the stables, and took them to the mountain, and adds that at first they didn't even take him to school.
"That wasn't really an adoption. Adoptive parents don't make you work from five in the morning until eleven at night. Sometimes it was one in the morning and I was still in the stable. If an animal gave birth, I slept in the stables" - Roberto Bustos Morales
In his account, differences also appear within the house. He assures that the family ate in the dining room while they forced him to eat in the kitchen, that he did not always receive the same food, and that they hid him when friends arrived.
The foster family maintains that mossèn Prefecte Cabré handed over the minor "legally"
The foster mother, from her home in El Pont de Suert, maintains an opposite version. She explains that a priest from Tarragona, a friend of the family, handed the minor over to them for "temporary adoption" and denies that they used him as slave labor.
"But we have the papers. We did everything legally. I remember Prefecte telling me that his father used to pick him up, beat him twice, and take him to beg for alms and then bring him back" - foster mother of Roberto Bustos Morales
According to the case data, the Casa Sant Josep of Tarragona was then directed by mossèn Prefecte Cabré. It was he who handed the minor over to a married couple of livestock farmers from Viu de Llevata under the legal figure of temporary foster care of the Francoist Guardianship Court.
The same woman describes the minor with derogatory expressions and assures that he was happy at home until some villagers told her that they treated him like a slave. Bustos completely rejects that version and links that stage to the loss of his identity and family ties.
Military service revealed to him that he had been born in Madrid on February 3, 1953
The change came when he was called up for service. Then he discovered that his name was not Andrés Muñoz Alcolea, but Roberto Bustos Morales, that he had been born in Madrid on February 3, 1953, that his mother's name was Felisa and that a father was listed as unknown.
That finding also confirmed to him that he had been separated from his three brothers, José, Manolo, and Gregorio. Bustos maintains that until that moment he knew they existed, but not where they were or why they had been separated.
"When I learned my real name, I began to understand that they had stolen something more than my childhood. They had taken my brothers away" - Roberto Bustos Morales
After learning his real identity, he returned to Tarragona to ask for information at the orphanage, but he assures that they did not even allow him to pass the door. The search for José, Manolo and Gregorio continued for sixty years after that discovery.