Canary Islands, Spain

Canary Islands, Spain

31 March, 2009

Talk about fate.

A set of Spanish twins unknowingly separated at birth reunited 28 years later after a chance meeting in a shopping mall.

Turned out the identical twin girls were mixed up after being born prematurely at Gran Canaria hospital in January 1973, Daily Mail reported in 2009.

One of the women grew up with a sister she and her family thought was her twin only to find out later that she was a stranger. The other was brought up by the wrong parents as an only child and never got to know her biological father before he died.

When DNA tests revealed they were related, the pair launched a claim for damages after the regional health chiefs for the now-defunct hospital offered them just S$2,900 compensation.

The legal battle ended eight years later in 2009 with a Spanish court ordering the health chiefs to award them S$980,000 in compensation.

Another S$680,000 was also awarded to the twins’ mother and the “daughter” she mistook for her own for 28 years.