My mum was a 17-year-old free spirit - so she was locked up and put in a coma

George Mihalcea

Marina Freixa always knew there was something dark and unspoken about her family. Her mother had grown up under Spain's decades-long dictatorship, which ended in 1975, but the details of her childhood were hazy. Then everything changed one Christmas a decade ago - when Marina was about 20. That winter's evening around the table, with a cloud of cigarette smoke suspended in the air and wine glasses drained, Marina's mother, Mariona Roca Tort, began to speak. "My parents reported me to the