Óscar

The moment I read that I was adopted, I went back to the other room to tell my partner, and we were both in shock. We couldn’t believe what we were reading, as no one had ever told me that I had been adopted.

That day and the nights that followed were horrible for me. I had so many questions.

It so happened that on Sunday that week, I had a 10K race in Ensanche de Vallecas, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Madrid, and my parents live in Rivas-Vaciamadrid, a town very close to Ensanche. My parents already knew about the wedding, and since I had to pick up my race number the day after I heard the news about the adoption, I stopped by my parents’ house with the idea of telling them about the wedding and then telling them that, after getting the certificate, I had seen something and wanted them to tell me what I had seen.

The moment I started telling them, my father bowed his head and began to cry inconsolably, asking me for forgiveness over and over again. Meanwhile, my mother had only heard the last part of what I had said about the wedding, since she wasn’t wearing her hearing aid, and she kept saying that it was normal for him to cry, since his son was getting married. Until my father told her that wasn’t the reason, but that I had found out I was adopted.

There is no doubt that my adoptive parents are the ones who raised me and I love them dearly, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have doubts about whether or not to look for your biological family. A few days after telling my parents that I knew, I decided to start looking for my birth family.

Many days and weeks passed before I was able to talk to my adoptive father about the subject again. Until then, I had been unable to bring it up. That was when he told me to come by his house so he could answer any questions I had.

On the day my father felt ready to talk to me, I already had some information about my biological family, including that my mother had died in 2009 at the age of 72 in Madrid, where she lived in the Puerta del Ángel neighborhood, in central Madrid. I began my search with the help of a friend of mine who is a journalist. He advised me where to go and what information I could legally obtain. We also went to the neighborhood where my mother had lived to ask about possible family members.

I should mention that I found out about her death thanks to an obituary I saw on the Internet, which gave me information about the cementery where she was buried. I was then able to obtain my mother’s death certificate, which indicated the hospital where she died.

When I went to my adoptive parents’ house to talk to them, my father told me that my mother couldn’t have children and that, after getting married, they applied to adopt legally, which involved going through some paperwork, interviews, and a visit from an inspector to my father’s workplace to assess his job stability. They knew about my existence from the beginning, but they had to wait until the dangerous period of pregnancy had passed, as well as the possibility that my first mother might refuse to give me up for adoption at birth.

When I was born, my adoptive parents were 31 and 29 years old. Among other things my father told me, he said that they did not know my biological mother, that they chose my name and that they had me with them from my second day of life.

My adoptive father has always wanted to help me find my biological family, but my adoptive mother has always been very jealous and afraid of losing me.

Despite having obtained a lot of documentation about my first family, I couldn’t figure anything out, but thanks to the posts I had made on social media, someone contacted me privately and told me to get in touch with another person who could help me. This person is a journalist and historian who wrote about the Marín families in the years before my mother was born and could trace my family tree, starting from the literal birth certificate of my biological mother, which I obtained after writing to the Marín City Council.

After obtaining the certificate and sending it to this person, he drew up my entire family tree, going back from my mother, and also told me that there was someone on the internet who could be an aunt by marriage.

After searching extensively on social media, I finally found someone that knew about my cousins, and just one month after learning that I was adopted, I managed to get in touch with them, their children, and my aunt-in-law. They added me to a WhatsApp group and introduced themselves, telling me a little about the family.

They told me that no one knew I existed and that they barely knew my mother, since she had gone to Madrid to work. They also confirmed that I had a brother four years older than me, who knew nothing about my existence and had to be told. For my part, I did know I had a brother, since my birth report indicated that I had had a child four years earlier.

After April 26, 2025, when I contacted part of my family, and until August 4, 2025, we kept in touch through a WhatsApp group. On August 4, my partner and I traveled to Combarro (Pontevedra), where we met almost everyone in the group, except for my brother and his wife, whom we met on Friday, August 8.

Those were the happiest days of my life, and the smile I had on my face at all times was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me.

Now the family has grown, and most of them will attend our wedding, if work permits.

My adoptive mother has finally accepted that I have found and met them, and she wants to meet them soon, on my wedding day.