Half-Siblings With Children Seeking Court Approval To Marry
Two half-siblings in Spain have two children together and are fighting for the right to get married.
Ana Parra’s father abandoned her when she was a child. She knew she had a half-brother but did not meet him until she was 20 years old.
Ana told media in Barcelona Province: “My mother told me that my father had left us to start another family and that he had had another child.”
Daniel Parra added: “Someone had told me that maybe I had a sister out there, but my father never told me, it was something he wanted to hide.”
Ana tracked her half-brother down on Facebook. They eventually met and could not help but feeling attracted to one another.
Ana said: “We didn’t want to realise it, we were angry with ourselves because it was hard to admit and break that taboo: we are siblings even though we didn’t feel that way.”
She recalled their first canoodle, telling local media: “We were partying, we approached each other slowly and gave each other our first kiss.”
Afterwards, recalled Ana: “We went our separate ways, we were somewhat ashamed of what had just happened.”
But, said Daniel: “That kiss broke all barriers, marked a before and after, it was like a reality check.”
After just a few days, the half-siblings realised that they could not carry on without seeing each other again.
Daniel said: “Imagine liking a girl and, for a moral reason, being forbidden to be with her. It’s really hard to deal with.”
They started spending time together without revealing that they were romantically involved.
It was only after a trip to London, where they could behave like a normal couple, that they decided to go public with their relationship.
Ana said of the trip: “That was the first time we can say that we behaved, in public, like a real couple.
“We went out to dinner, we took walks. It was like an explosion of freedom.”
Incredibly, the couple decided to go public on TV.
Ana said: “We didn’t feel like telling everyone our story one by one, so that’s why we decided to tell it this way.”
They were quickly met with a deluge of criticism online.
Ana said: “There are people who have written to us on social media telling us that we’re going to burn in hell.”
But that did not deter the couple, who now have two children, aged five and three.
The children know their parents are half-siblings “although they’re still very young and don’t understand”, Ana told local media.
Despite the higher risk of being born with some kind of recessive disease due to their parents being genetically related, the kids are “perfectly healthy”, Ana revealed.
Although incest is not a crime in Spain, the Spanish Civil Code prohibits marriage between direct relatives.
The couple are now fighting to be able to tie the knot in their own country.
Ana said: “Societies must advance and not cling to traditionalism. Homosexuals were also not allowed to marry and now they can.
“We love each other and that is what should prevail. We are not harming anyone. That is why we want people to know our story.”