Abandonados (2026) s01e01 Episode Script

1
FRANCE RAILWAY STATION
My name is Elvira,
and on the 22nd of April 1984
my brothers and I were abandoned
in the Estación de Francia
by a man named Denis.
It's been 40 years
and it's all a blur for us.
We were well dressed.
We had just come from Paris
and we didn't know anything else.
Not our parents' names or our surnames
or why we were there.
Now I want to know who our parents are
and why they abandoned us.
What really happened.
We're always running up and down.
And I thought it was a dream.
I teach sign language to kids.
I have had a full and happy life
and I forgot that they had abandoned me.
But, when I turned 32,
I got pregnant and everything changed.
It blows my mind as a mother
and I see the connection
one has with a child.
A connection that
you can't find anywhere else.
And that's when I failed to understand.
Till then I thought I had.
Well, okay,
you've seen it in movies,
you've seen it on TV shows.
Life puts you in extreme situations
and you have to leave your child
I suppose
I don't know.
It was like I can't comprehend it.
And three.
ABANDONED
I need answers
and my brothers' help,
because I was only two,
and it's all a blur for me.
Truth is, we've spoken very little
of our abandonment.
Ramón works in IT, has a family,
and moved out when he was 23.
They abandoned us
in the Estación de Francia
and, previously, I have the feeling
that there were some excursions
that weren't the typical "go to the park".
They were
running, gunshots,
some things that I've blocked out.
Richi is a free spirit.
He works in hotel management
and is really sensitive.
I'm deeply affected by all of this.
It's complicated.
I don't have many memories either.
We've spoken very little about this,
very little.
At home, I never used to speak
with my siblings about what happened
before our abandonment.
It seems strange, but it's true.
For me, it was a taboo topic
with my brother, Ramón.
More than once
I'd have liked to ask him questions
but I never dared to do it.
I suppose I was afraid to bring up a topic
that might have caused him pain.
I have no memories, but he does.
There's a time when I'm an adolescent
that I realize
that I thought we'd come by train.
To the Estación de Francia, the train
And one day, my brother
I remember it perfectly.
During a night of partying, he said to me,
"We didn't come on the train."
"What do you mean?"
"You must have memorized
that you arrived by train."
No, we were in the train station,
but they brought us there by car.
We get in the white car,
which was my dad's Mercedes.
But my dad isn't there. Denis is.
He was my dad's associate.
He was like his right-hand man.
He's a man who's wearing chains,
who's wearing a ring.
Shirtless, strong He's smoking.
We three kids are sitting in the back
and we don't know
exactly where we're going.
I have the feeling the journey isn't long,
and Denis stops the car.
We get out and we follow him
into a pretty big building.
It was huge. There was nobody around.
And he had us sit on a bench.
And he said, "Do you want candy?"
That's when he picked up and left
and disappeared.
We just stayed there. Not moving.
We're not too worried because we're kids,
but eventually we get up
and start playing over there.
It was a stopped train, the doors open,
and my sister and I running
inside the train, in circles
A passenger asks us where are parents are
because they see us running around.
My brother told me I started to cry
and that's why a ticket taker came.
They called the police.
And they start asking us questions.
We don't know how to answer them.
I think that policeman is the one
who finally took us to the police station
and then the shelter.
They told us three kids were coming.
Generally, we know when a child is coming.
Even if it was a shelter,
the police would call us
or social services would come.
They often held hands, the three of them.
And were a bit disoriented.
They're unable to tell us
the names of their father or mother,
what they'd been doing,
where they were from
So it occurs to me and Ana,
my fellow social worker,
we say, "We need to advertise these kids.
We must make them visible."
THE NECESSARY PROCEDURES ARE UNDERWAY
And they took our photo there
with Ramón on one side and me and Richi.
This photo makes me feel
tenderness and sadness.
This photo actually changed our lives.
CHILDREN'S HOME
The only thing I remember
about the center is sitting on the bed
Being brats, you know? We three seated
not knowing what we were doing there.
We had no clue.
We went quickly to Ramón.
Besides speaking French,
he said a few words in Spanish.
They're asking me lots of questions.
And at that moment I'm blocked.
He shut down He didn't
He didn't want to say anything
It was complicated.
It's also really weird
to not know our surnames
or our parents' names.
Normally, a six-year-old child knows
that information.
IN SUMMARY,
THERE IS A STRONG PSYCHOLOGICAL BLOCK
We believe
it wasn't so much an emotional block,
but a message, "Don't say our names."
"We can't say our parents' names."
As a social worker,
I went to the Estación de Francia
to check it out.
If I found something, a pacifier,
a baby bottle, a book, a story,
anything
that their mother had left
for someone to find
and they'd forgotten.
A suitcase Nothing. Nothing.
From the youth center, I have no memories.
The memories
I do have are what my brother's told me.
I liked that place a lot
because I guess
I was used to a very nomadic life.
So, when I get there, I'm with other kids.
I guess I wasn't used to that
and I had a great time there.
Richi told me that
whenever we stayed at the center,
when you woke up,
you found your clothes for that day
at the foot of your bed.
We got dressed, and every day we had
an excursion. We went to the mountains,
we painted, we played with water,
we did water activities
and stuff on the patio.
The smell of the Plastidecor, the pencils
It was something I'd never had
and I like it.
We did really cool activities
as little kids.
Nobody had a dad there.
You can tell some kids have had
a hard time financially
They're okay, they're well fed
and have no nutritional deficiencies,
which we usually see in homeless kids.
Seeing their ability
to adapt to the center,
their behaviors, their clothes
Everything made us think
they might be part of a family
of criminals or of a mafia group
or something like that.
And they'd left the kids there
to protect them,
as if to say, "You won't touch my kids."
And they disappeared.
I'm working in the office
and at one point I need
information from social services.
We go into the office,
and the first thing we see
on a big notice board with all the ads,
is a white paper,
with three kids, really cute,
and quite strikingly, it said,
"Do you know them?
We need information about these kids.
If you know them, contact
Montse Martí, social worker."
And I call the head of social services
and say, "Hey, Montse,
there's a family interested in the kids."
As a couple, we got along really well,
we thought our lives
were meaningful enough
that we didn't need to have kids per se,
but I got pregnant just like that.
It ended badly.
I got pregnant a second and third time.
The three ended badly, in miscarriages.
The moment we thought,
why not become adoptive parents
and make some kids happy,
we said, "Okay, let's take them in."
A couple started coming on our excursions.
We went with all the kids from the center
and this couple.
And then they came more often.
That's when we started to realize
they were our adoptive parents,
or that they could be.
And obviously, the hugs
and happiness started.
And they say,
"Here are clothes for them to wear."
And so they started helping us.
The counselor is looking after the girl,
Luís is helping Ramón
and I'm trying with Ricard,
but Ricard is jumping and dancing
with so much joy he can't contain it.
My mother is so lovely.
I was standing on the table
and I was so happy,
I couldn't put on my underpants.
I drive us home, we park and go upstairs.
And at the apartment door, we tell them,
"This will be your home
until your parents from Paris are found."
My sister was a little sweetie,
but my brother and I two earthquakes.
Two earthquakes.
So, we were running around.
We're going to destroy everything.
Opening doors, opening closets,
discovering the world awaiting them.
It was moving.
One of the things
that surprised me was the light
in the apartment we went to.
Super bright,
every room faced the outside
In our earlier life,
everything was totally dark.
I also remember a scene they told me.
They put the three of us on the bed
and put socks on our feet,
and by the time they reached the third,
the first had already taken his off.
I imagined them putting on socks.
Uh, again. Uh, again.
She said, "You're active.
You're active kids."
The moment I arrive at my mother's house,
I feel like I have a home.
A family and together with my siblings.
That is the thing I was with my siblings.
It's the most important thing
Just imagine if they'd separated us.
Each in a different home.
We were really lucky
because they took all three of us in.
That was the most important thing.
Staying together.
I believe having lived through this
unites you differently.
We three are three against the world.
Our adoption was so unusual
that they interviewed our parents.
They basically said to us, "You're crazy"
Because we told them, "Just three.
There are lots of families with three."
They said, "All at once, no. One by one,
yes, but all at once, no. You're crazy."
Their parents hadn't abandoned them,
something had happened and suddenly,
their family had disappeared.
So, yes, they were very upset.
The eldest didn't want to, he hid.
- He didn't say hello.
- He didn't say hi when people came.
The middle one started jumping around
and throwing cushions
and things up in the air.
Yeah, yeah. Each one was
But that was practically the first month.
Time passed
and the adults kept asking us questions.
One day,
I was cooking,
I must've been in a hurry because
I was making mashed potatoes from a box.
And it must've been a universal design,
because Ricard said, "Like Mom's."
"And what does Mom make you?"
And there was no answer.
We go for a shower, well, a bath.
So they get in the bathtub and Ramón says,
"Dad always showered with lots of suds
and he dried himself like this."
Oh, yeah? And did you have baths?
And that was all.
Every time there was a spontaneous memory,
there were never any answers.
No clue they could give us.
It was a total mystery.
It was really hard for us to remember.
It's like we wanted to forget.
Actually, I do remember my father a bit.
White hair, long
But I don't remember my mother's face.
My mother. It's just that my mother
I remember very little about my mother.
I don't know why.
We were really young.
It was morning.
We went into the perfume shop
to buy some soap,
and suddenly
Elvira sees a display of lipsticks,
points to a red one and says, "Like Mom."
And I say, "I don't wear makeup like Mom.
What did Mom look like?" And she says,
"With short hair here and long there."
In my imagination, she's a blond lady.
With long hair here, with bangs,
and red lips.
I used to imagine that she found me,
yeah. Many times.
Me seated on the sofa.
Her coming down the hall.
We'd hug.
And at that point, the image would vanish.
What happened to us is really strange.
Right? I mean
Leaving three kids like that Well groomed
in good clothes. We had everything.
The story, although I've been telling it
my whole life, I say that
That I was rich. I was rich.
I really did have that memory
because he'd always said it.
I remember him saying, for example,
that I remember us being in huge houses.
We lived in places
with lots of luxury cars.
And where we lived
there were many cups filled with coins
and lots of cash.
Once
Ricard tried to enter a room
and his dad scolded him severely,
and his dad was in that room
with lots of women.
I don't remember even a friend in France.
We didn't have relationships with anyone.
I think our dad was also using us
as a cover.
He put us in the car and
Oh, since he's traveling with two boys,
everything's fine.
It was a bit like that.
First of all, six-year-olds in France
who haven't gone to school,
doesn't make sense at all.
For a six-year-old to not know
his mom and dad's surnames, too.
So, what's the mystery?
They don't want to use names
to cover something up.
Then a clue, like saying they'd seen cash.
"THE FATHER MADE
'COINS AND STAMPS' IN HIS HOME"
That's what we've been thinking all along.
The very first hypothesis,
for whatever reason,
because we'd been told by the police,
was that they might have been lost,
that they'd gotten out of the car
or they'd gone that way
and later couldn't find them.
But no, that soon disappeared.
And soon after they told us
it could be a mafia thing.
WEEKLY REPOR
The calm waters, hot sun
and peaceful atmosphere of the Costa Brava
hide from the tourists who come here
in search of for peace and relaxation
one of the most important
mafia organizations
at work in our country.
According to police, in Costa Brava,
numerous foreigners and Spaniards
have been found
who, through various legal businesses,
are laundering dirty money
acquired illegally beyond our borders.
White-collar crime.
When I was at the youth center,
they kept on asking me,
and since I was blocked,
I didn't say a word.
Then, when I was at my mother's house,
she asked me every day
"So, what was your dad's name?"
"Dad."
- "Any other name?"
- "Dad."
- "What was Mom's name?"
- "Mom."
- "And the man who left you?"
- "Denis."
Whenever we rode in the car,
she tried to bring it up with me,
and I really didn't want to talk.
One day, Ramón starts crying
and we don't know why.
An uncontrollable fit of crying
for no apparent reason.
We sat on the terrace of a cafe,
put a soft drink in front of him
and waited.
He cried for two or three hours straight,
yeah, straight.
But once it was over,
he picked up his drink, we did too,
and we were all much calmer.
He had told us once,
"They abandoned us.
He told me he was going to buy candy
and never came back."
He'd explained that very well.
We didn't know if Ramón was suffering
from temporary amnesia
or fear,
which we really thought could be the case.
That he knew about his parents' crimes
or they'd told him
not to talk about certain thing.
and they'd threatened him
to keep him quiet.
Because it's impossible for a six-year-old
to never say a word.
I get the feeling
our parents indoctrinated us a bit
to not give out information,
and that way, we'd be a bit more protected
and they'd go unnoticed.
Elvira was impressive
because one day you'd hear her,
you'd already put her to bed, she was fine
and then you'd hear, "I want water."
And you'd stand there, cold.
A two-year-old girl
not saying it with tenderness or emotion.
She wasn't afraid. "I want water."
And then that
We had a lot of work to do
because she'd lacked maternal love.
Then, Ricard dreamed really loudly
and sometimes said, "I don't want to!"
It made you suffer,
that "I don't want to!"
We looked at each other and thought,
"What a life must they have had?
Had they suffered? Had they not?
What could've happened to them?
What do they remember?"
Especially, Ramón. What did he have
inside that he couldn't express?
You don't remember, don't want to say,
you're afraid
What secrets were they keeping?
Years later,
and being older, my mom told me
that there was a period of time
that they were on the alert.
Because the story was so bizarre.
We also thought, who knows if,
when they left the kids,
they wanted to keep track of them.
And, if they were powerful mafiosos,
they could have, if they'd gone
to the maternity ward at the youth center,
could've followed up.
So they'd have known the kids were with us
and a certain fear of
what if these people show up?
15 JULY 1984
Good evening,
an inmate at Modelo de Barcelona prison,
Raymond Vaccarizi,
was killed at 11:15 p.m.
by two gunshots from outside the building.
Vaccarizi was French,
and the police considered him to be
the boss of a dangerous criminal gang
in the Lyon area.
Seven inmates escaped at midday
3 DAYS LATER
after starting a riot.
All escapees are dangerous
French and Argentinian criminals.
Was Vaccarizi's killing
a vendetta, a warning?
Was it part of the escape plan?
Was it triggered by
other mob bosses' fears
of becoming his next victims?
Whatever the answer to these questions,
the result is the same.
Six criminals,
all serving sentences of over 15 years,
managed to escape, some of them armed.
Vacation started
and we decided to go to the Delta
as we'd done many times before,
with cousins and relatives.
One of the best experiences.
One of the best memories.
It was awesome. It was
We took off our shoes on July 1at
and we didn't put them on again
for almost a month.
We swam, fished, cooked paellas
and lived there all summer.
It's pure nature.
And to be living there without anything.
I remember an ice truck passed by.
Then one came with bread.
Then another carrying ice cream.
Every morning,
grandpa chose some of the grandkids
and we'd make a circle and row out,
while my grandpa pulled in all the fish.
We ate the fish at midday.
And we camped there all summer long.
It was so awesome.
The best time of my life.
The first summer I was pretty scared.
One day, I was walking with my aunt
and a car passed by, a white Mercedes.
I pointed to the car and said,
"Dad's car."
Every time they saw a white Mercedes,
my mom said to my dad,
"What if they come looking for us?"
They were afraid, above all,
that they'd shoot us.
Countless times.
She was always afraid of that.
She thought maybe they were mafia
or people who knew my parents
and had come looking for us.
I'm with Ramón
and Ricard, saying good night,
and suddenly,
Ramón says to me,
"What happens if our parents come?"
It was a hard question
because I didn't have a ready answer,
but I blurted out,
"We'll introduce ourselves
and get to know each other".
My mother's very strong.
We came back from summer vacation.
It was the first time we went to school
and we were really excited
about the life we were starting.
Every day Lluís played them music,
explained things to them, and so
we created a really strong connection.
They're seeing
that we are fully present parents,
when we put them to bed
and when we wake them up.
Bit by bit we introduced
the words "dad" and "mom."
Bit by bit they felt more ours.
Bit by bit, but relatively quickly,
we went from fostering to adopting,
in other words, being a complete family.
30 YEARS LATER
I think that
I think one of the most important points
for me was getting pregnant.
Can you feel Simone kicking?
Say, "Simone."
That's when I started
asking myself lots of things.
You start to wonder,
"Do I want to breastfeed?
Do I want to do this or that?"
You think about a lot of things
One leads to another and, obviously,
there I started thinking,
"And me?
When I was born, what did they do?
Natural birth, epidural, C-section?"
How I was born, the day I was born,
where I was born.
I needed to know things
I'd never considered before.
How do you start looking with nothing?
Well, I did a DNA test.
In the ad, you see a kind of map.
It says,
"You can know where your origins are".
I thought,
"Wow, maybe it'll show me Paris."
I need answers, and for that
I need my brothers' help.
I don't know if I should tell them,
because, on one hand,
I'm afraid of their reaction.
Me? My sister doesn't have to ask
my permission for anything.
She's my sister.
She can do what she wants.
Of Richi's, no, of Richi's, no.
Because Richi is a free spirit,
and I knew he'd support me 100%.
But of Ramón, I was
Well I was afraid.
I was intimidated by him.
His personality is very
And that he'd say,
"No. I'm not interested."
And if he said, "No. I'm not interested,"
obviously that would be totally fine,
but would've closed certain doors for me.
Because it means
I couldn't rely on his memories.
If I can't rely on them,
I have no place to go.
It's true that I'm much more reserved and
the only one who maybe wanted
to protect his privacy more,
and not expose myself.
Surprisingly, his reaction was incredible.
"Can you help me?"
I said, "With everything, Elvira.
No problem."
"I'll tell you everything I remember,
whatever I can
I'll do my best to remember."
And I felt that
though at that time it didn't start out
as a completely shared journey,
I felt support and tranquility.
I'd always found it to be really hard.
I thought it was really hard,
not wanting to lose my current life
by looking back.
That's why I never did it.
She asks Ricard and I to do a DNA test,
and also asks me to try and remember more
and explain everything that had happened
before they abandoned us.
Because these memories are what we'll use
to be able to find some site
that will lead us to finding my parents.
Without those memories, we can't do it.
All my memories are high and low moments
of fears and joys and cold, of sensations.
And I warned her that we're definitely
going to find things we don't like,
because they're memories, above all,
of violence, yelling, fear
But I didn't care.
I want to know what happened.
Why they abandoned us.
So I asked him
to start from the day it all began.
I remember a first-floor apartment.
It has a huge window with light shining in
and I don't know why
my parents aren't there.
Richi's there and Elvira, and some adults
I also remember laughter
and some little boy, too.
There's a hidden door that you open
and we see there's a staircase
in two sections.
Narrow, dark So we go down it,
running because they're telling us, "Run."
We go downstairs
and go behind the counter of a bar
and we go straight out there,
and it really smells.
The place seems like a bar,
a dive, a brothel, maybe.
It smells of smoke, tobacco, alcohol.
Nobody's there or it's only half open,
with the blinds half lowered.
We go out to the street.
It seems like we're escaping,
running out of that apartment.
I see there are tons of things
and memories,
things he'd had in his head
that he'd never told me.
And he didn't share them
because he didn't want to talk about them.
I have several blurry images
in my memories.
For example, the Eiffel Tower.
From the window you could see the leg.
I also remember
a crocodile hanging from the ceiling
in a toy store.
I also remember
riding with my dad in luxury cars.
A Porsche
recently taken from the dealership,
a green Jaguar,
a J24 or something, with shiny wheels.
A white Mercedes
I remember traveling a lot with my dad.
At one point,
he parks in front of a brothel or bar
and says, "Don't turn off the motor."
And when he came back,
both his eyebrows were split.
I also remember having a real gun
and shooting it and it really scaring me.
Some of the memories he tells me
seem like movies,
because our story actually has
a rather cinematic element.
All these memories are out of order.
So to get the most out of them,
I need to put them in order.
With my brothers' approval,
now I have to tell my mom our plans
because she's the main source
of support that I've had
since my father died.
My father got sick when we were teens
and it was a tough blow.
Especially for my mother,
but for all four of us too.
We had a beautiful relationship.
I guess, fathers and daughters
sometimes create very close relationships.
She went from being
a hard-working, studious girl
to having a total breakdown
when Lluís got sick and died.
So, yeah, it was a very, very hard year
for her, the worst.
And it took a year or two to recover.
He was someone I was very close to.
Always.
At six I lose my birth father,
a pair of professors adopts me,
and Luís, who's my father,
also dies of cancer.
So, I lose another father.
He was an angel.
I really miss him.
To me, he was an excellent father.
A role model for his kids.
And, well
I, because of him,
want to be the best dad to my daughter.
Wow, it's
- Let's do it again, okay?
- But that's great
No? It's something
that really touches me, you know?
My father taught me how to love people.
He had a heart like this.
He was awesome.
Enough.
Elvira calls me and says,
"We want to know a bit more,
please give us more information.
We already spoke to Ramón."
And so, since we're on the phone, I say,
"If you come to the house, I'll tell you
something I think is important."
And I ask her,
"What do we have to discuss?"
It's unusual for our mother
to invite us to her house
to give us information that she's saved
from her search.
Well, this air of mystery.
"Why didn't she want to tell me
what it was on the phone?"
I work late and am the last to arrive.
I give her a hug. She's happy,
but I see she's also a bit nervous.
Normally, when we have to talk
about something important,
the place for meetings is
"come and get cozy in the kitchen."
We go to the kitchen.
Ricard and Elvira are there too.
She pulls out a folder.
Like those she keeps in her document
library, where she saves everything.
It says, "Don't open."
And I tell them,
"I saved this
because it didn't seem important. But,
since you want to know, I'll show you."
She takes out an envelope
She says she's saved it for 40 years.
There are newspaper clippings.
FRENCH MAFIOSO MURDERED
That day, I opened the paper,
I perused it quickly.
I saw it said the name of a woman.
she thinks
we have close ties with the French mob.
Because Raymond, mafioso, Barcelona,
just a few days after abandoning the kids.
"You were speaking French,
talking about guns, luxury cars"
She sensed that something had happened
in connection with the criminal world,
which is very likely,
which is why three French kids
suddenly appeared
in Barcelona.
And nobody claimed them.
I was speechless.
We didn't know what to say.
My mother told us,
"Dad and I
were under the impression
that this could be your father."