Survivors of Franco-era 'fallen women' centres seek apology

Consuelo Garcia del Cid was 16 when the family doctor came into her bedroom in Barcelona, Spain with her mother in 1974, grabbed her left arm and pushed a needle into a vein.

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She blacked out then woke up in a strange room a day's drive away in Madrid — one of thousands of girls and young women who were accused of a range of perceived moral failings and taken to state-run Catholic rehabilitation institutions during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

On Monday, a Catholic body that includes most of the communities of nuns that helped operate some of the centres, will hold a ceremony to formally ask the women for forgiveness, the first event of its kind in Spain, announced in April but delayed by the death of Pope Francis.