Hundreds of residents in Alboraya, a city in eastern Spain, took to the streets Sunday to prevent the Civil Guard from executing a court order to hand over a Spanish woman’s three children to their Mexican father.
Residents gathered in front of the home of Isabel Monros and her children, one age 13 and twins age 10, to prevent officers from getting to the children, setting off a six-hour standoff.
The Civil Guard officers finally left and the children were not handed over to their father, Joaquin Escolano.
The court ruling giving custody to Escolano “is a bad decision” and the judge should “listen to the children,” Monros said.
Monros, who brought the children to Spain in 2010, went into the street after Escolano and the officers left to thank her neighbors, who greeted her with applause.
“This is not going to end here,” Monros said.
Doctors’ reports show that “the children are strongly opposed to execution of this order” and their return to Mexico, Ignacio Amat, an attorney for Monros, told EFE.
The fight will continue to allow the children, who have dual Spanish-Mexican citizenship, to remain with their mother in Spain, Amat said.
The long-running custody battle started in Mexico several years ago and has continued in Spain, where the father asked a court for custody so he could take the children back to his country.
