AP Features, February 28th, 2007
Milagros Vacas Arlandis had three children and a demanding job as a doctor. Still, she and her husband felt something was missing from their lives and they decided to adopt a child.
For the next 10 years, they battled Spain's tough bureaucratic hurdles to adoption, without success. So they turned to China _ and are now the parents of a 4-year-old girl they named Maria.
As once-homogenous Spain digests a newly diverse population, enriched by an influx of some 4 million immigrants over the last decade, it also has one of the world's highest per capita international adoption rates in the world. More than half the adopted children come from China.
"My husband and I always wanted to provide a home for a child who didn't have a family," said Vacas Arlandis, who lives in the northern city of Santander. "We tried to adopt in Spain, but after waiting for years and hearing nothing, we decided to take a different route."
After the U.S., Spain is the country that adopts the most children from China, the China Center of Adoption Affairs reported. In 2005, Spanish families adopted more than 5,400 children from abroad, up from 1,800 in 1997. More than 2,700 of the 2005 adoptions were from China, according to government data.
In contrast, the U.S. _ a country whose population of 300 million is nearly seven times greater than Spain's population of 44 million _ recorded just over 7,900 adoptions from China in 2005, the Department of State said.
Greater female participation in the work force and rising divorce rates have led many Spaniards to start families later, said Juan Jose Garcia Ferrer, director of the Institute for Children and Family, a branch of Madrid's regional government.
"As women become more involved in their careers, they are putting off motherhood," Garcia Ferrer said. "And with 30 being the median age for a first marriage and half of all marriages ending in divorce, the demand for adoptions is going to keep growing."
At the same time, rapid economic development over the last decade has given many families better access to technology as well as the financial means to pay for adoption fees and international travel, he said.
China is the country of choice for most Spanish families looking to adopt, thanks to brief waits, a relatively transparent legal process and a high availability of children _ mostly girls _ under age three, said Roberto Pili, director of Transmes, a Barcelona-based agency that files paperwork for families seeking to adopt Chinese children.
Much of the problem in Spain is that it is very complicated to adopt a child whose parents are still alive _ the consent of the biological parents is required and they are often difficult to locate. Abandoned kids often spend years in state care and are thus older and less appealing to couples who want to start a family or add to an existing one.
But in China "the process is secure, the children are very young and the medical information about the children is accurate," said Pili, who has three adopted Chinese daughters.
China's one child per family population-control policy has combined with its cultural bias toward boys over girls to create a situation where the country _ "simply has a very large number of adoptable female children," Pili added.
But with the growing international demand for adoptions now exceeding the number of available children, China is tightening its regulations to favor healthy, economically prosperous, middle-aged couples.
Celsa Vega, a 50-year-old single Madrid woman whose adopted daughter, Julia, is now 6, said she felt lucky to have adopted from China before the new rules made it next to impossible for single parents to do so.
Vega, who now works as a civil servant, spent her youth traveling, studying and working various jobs. But on finding herself single and in her mid-40s, Vega decided to make her dream of becoming a mother a reality by adopting a Chinese baby.
"I waited a long time and always felt like I had many years ahead of me," Vega said. "But at a certain point I decided that I had reached the age where I had to make a decision: either I become a mother or I don't."
In 2002 _ after waiting less than two years _ she traveled to China to pick up Julia.
"There was a connection between us from the start," Vega said. "Adopting her was the best decision I ever made."
Vacas Arlandis also described the experience as overwhelmingly positive.
"People say you did her a big favor, but she's the one who did us the favor," she said.
Both women said their daughters have had little trouble integrating into Spanish society.
"We have never had any problems with racism _ if anything, people see Maria as exotic," Vacas Arlandis said of her daughter.
She added that Maria does not yet see herself as different: "She tells me, 'Mommy, I am pretty like you.'"
