A Spanish TV star has stunned the nation after revealing a baby she had by surrogacy was fathered by her dead son.
A week after announcing to the world she had a child from surrogacy in the US, Ana Obregón, 68, said to ¡Hola! magazine while staying in Miami: "This girl isn't my daughter, she's my granddaughter."
Her son died of cancer at 27 and she said it was his final wish to bring a child of his own into the world.
Before Aless Lequio's death in 2020, a sample of his sperm was frozen and stored in New York.
The biological mother who carried the baby is reported to be a woman of Cuban origin living in Florida.
Surrogacy in Spain is illegal, but adopting a child born abroad is lawful.
Equality Minister Irene Montero responded to the surrogacy news and condemned the practice as "a form of violence against women".
The coalition’s Socialist party said legislation should be tweaked to prevent Spaniards from using surrogates in other countries.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles defended her and said that while the law was clear in Spain, personal decisions should be respected.
But Ana sees the fury over the baby's birth as "absurd", arguing that surrogacy is a form of assisted reproduction that is legal in much of the world beyond Spain.
¡Hola! said the baby was born on 20 March and was conceived in June, when Obregón’s son would have turned 30.
