I found out huge family secret when I saw my birth certificate – it changed my life for ever and there was another twist

A GROOM who needed his birth certificate to get married uncovered a devastating family secret.

Salvador López found out not only that he was adopted but also that he was one of up to 23 babies allegedly sold by their birth mother in a "womb for rent" child trafficking scandal.

The infants went to childless women in Majorca and Barcelona over two decades from the 1970s to 1990s.

Some of them were the birth mother's friends but most were strangers, with handovers allegedly arranged by social workers and nuns.

Salvador, now 39, had no idea he was adopted until he was preparing to get married in 2020.

He had to apply for his birth certificate, which revealed his real mother was a woman called María Rosa Santos Asensio.

Suddenly he found himself rewriting his life from scratch, he .

He said: "At that moment I felt a little disappointed, because I had lived a lie but, at the same time I was calm knowing that what I saw or imagined was not my invention."

He said he had previously felt rejected by some members of his adoptive family, and was puzzled at the lack of physical resemblance.

Now it made sense - and he wanted to know more about his origins.

But it set in train a shocking series of revelations that changed his life for ever.

His adoptive parents were dead so he could not ask them.

Instead he appealed on social media for information about a woman called María Rosa who gave birth in Majorca capital Palma in 1984.

Someone wrote back claiming to have known his biological mother.