Overview
- Officers arrested the parents at Bilbao’s Loiu airport in late November after confirming they intended to leave Spain following an unannounced visit to their daughter at a residential unit.
- The couple allegedly left their minor daughter alone on an intercity bus from Granada to Bilbao in February, after which the girl sought Social Services and was placed first in foster care and later in a state center.
- Authorities report that the girl’s brother, now an adult living in Bilbao, had been abandoned in similar circumstances years earlier when he was a minor.
- Following the police report, the suspects were presented to the judicial authority and the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office, which ordered their release with charges and returned custody of the daughter to them.
- Basque police say deliberate abandonment to shift care to the protection system has been detected in recent investigations and stress continued coordination with child welfare services.