Roberto Bustos Morales, 73, has reunited with his three brothers after a 60-year search, following a decade of his childhood spent in forced labour in Viu de Llevata, in the Lleida Pyrenees. Taken from an orphanage at around ten years old, he was given a different name and made to work without pay, according to his account.
Mr Bustos, who now lives in a residence in Castilló de Sos, Ribagorça, recounted his experience, stating, "They took me from the orphanage when I was ten or eleven. I turned 73 in February, so you can calculate how much time has passed." He was separated from his siblings and given the name Andrés Muñoz Alcolea, which were not his mother's surnames nor those of the family who took him in. "That was not really an adoption," he said. "Adoptive parents do not make you work from five in the morning until eleven at night."
He described often working until 1am and sleeping in the stables if an animal was giving birth. This routine continued seven days a week, leaving him no time to ask for a day off. "It never crossed my mind to ask for a day," he added.
A System of 'Temporary Foster Care'
The orphanage Mr Bustos mentioned was the Casa Sant Josep in Tarragona, also known as Casa Tutelar de San José. Founded in 1912, this institution was connected for decades to the old system of child protection and reform. In the 1960s, when Mr Bustos was handed over to farmers in Alta Ribagorça, the centre was run by Father Prefect Cabré, remembered in institutional memory as a "continuator and moderniser of welfare work."
Father Cabré removed Mr Bustos from the centre and gave him to a couple of livestock farmers in Viu de Llevata under the legal framework of 'temporary foster care' or 'family placement'. This Franco-era legislation allowed the Tutelary Court to entrust a child to a family until they reached adulthood. On paper, this was a charitable welfare measure, allowing a minor to leave the orphanage and integrate into a home. In practice, however, it often became a transfer of free child labour to rural families or small business owners who needed workers but could not or would not pay them.
The child signed no documents, the family paid nothing, and the centre was relieved of a mouth to feed. The system, protected by the rhetoric of Christian homes and charity, looked the other way, according to the report.
Conflicting Accounts of His Time in Viu de Llevata
A year ago, the publication located Mr Bustos's foster mother at her home in El Pont de Suert. She was 86 at the time and offered a different version of events. "He was a wonderful boy, a great person. A bit mongoloid: half subnormal," she claimed. She stated that a priest from Tarragona, a family friend, gave them the boy for temporary adoption. "We treated him like a son and he was very happy in our house until some neighbours in the village filled his head with ideas and started telling him we were using him as a slave. Andrés is not very bright."
She insisted they had papers and did everything legally. She recalled Father Prefect explaining that Mr Bustos's father would take him, beat him, and then take him to beg before returning him. "He had a very bad time as a child," she said. "So the priest told him: 'Well, go to a house where they will love you like a son.' This poor man was a saint and would send us the worst kids he had so we could control them for a few days. When Andrés (Roberto) left, they sent us another one who was terrible. Andrés was an angel. Later, we had our own daughter and he loved her like a sister."
Mr Bustos, however, is not intellectually impaired, despite the woman's suggestion. He can articulate a very different view of his time there. He described being put in charge of all the work with the cows shortly after arriving, in a way he called "brutal."
"They ate in the dining room and forced me to eat in the kitchen," he recalled. "They always gave me the same food. Sometimes they made special things for themselves and left me out. They hid me when friends came over. They never introduced me as a family member. At first, they didn't even take me to school. Like a son? They kept me as a slave! They had about 50 cows and I milked them, fed them, cleaned the stables, and took them to the mountain."
The Search for Identity and Family
In the 1960s, Viu de Llevata was an isolated village that functioned as a trap for a child without papers, family, or anyone to turn to. Mr Bustos barely knew any world beyond the stable and the mountains where he grazed livestock. "I didn't even know who I was. They had taken my papers, changed my name, and separated me from my brothers. Sometimes I thought about escaping, but where would I go? They made me believe I should be grateful because they gave me a roof and food. But I was not a son."
There was no wage, pay, contract, or real compensation for his years of work. "I was very poor then," his foster father had justified. "They never paid me a salary," Mr Bustos confirmed. "If I needed clothes, it depended on what they bought me or what others gave me. Everything was theirs: the house, the cows, the money... and my life also seemed to be theirs. They called me and still call me Andrés, even though I was Roberto. The thing is, I found that out too late."
The revelation came when he was called up for military service. While processing his documentation for the military, he discovered his real name was Roberto Bustos Morales, born in Madrid on 3 February 1953, son of Felisa and an unknown father. His three brothers had not disappeared by chance; the priest had separated them. "When I learned my real name, I started to understand that they had stolen a little more than my childhood," Mr Bustos said. "They had taken my brothers. I knew that José, Manolo, and Gregorio existed, but I did not know where they were. I went back to Tarragona to ask for information and they would not even let me past the orphanage door." This frustrated journey turned his search into an obsession that lasted 60 years.
