Madrid: A Spanish pensioner is set to receive a €3 million (Dh12.5 million or £2.2 million) inheritance after a DNA test on the remains of a wealthy landowner reportedly proved he was her father, as she had long suspected.
Carmen Gordo, 69, who lives in the Andalusian town of Moron de la Frontera on a monthly widow’s pension of €700 (£519), was the daughter of a maid on the estate of the late Antonio Alvarez Villalon, but he had never acknowledged her as his child.
Gordo announced recently that a DNA test ordered by a judge last year had proved without doubt that Alvarez Villalon was her father.
According to Fernando Osuna, her lawyer, she will ask for the inheritance due to her as the only child of Alvarez Villalon, who had left his estate to a niece.
Gordo said: “The economic aspect is nice, but I don’t need the money. What satisfies me is knowing that he was my father.”
Her mother had an affair with Alvarez Villalon, but was sacked after becoming pregnant. Osuna said: “At the time it would have brought public scandal.”
He said Gordo’s mother was given a home to live in with the baby.
Gordo stayed with grandparents when her mother sought work in another house and said it was hard not knowing who her father was, growing up in the Spain of the dictator Franco: “I had boyfriends who ran away when they learnt that I had no father.”
She heard rumours about the identity of her true father but did not challenge her mother “out of respect”.
Struck by Alzheimer’s before dying in 2004, Gordo’s mother opened up to her, she said: “‘The only man I ever loved was your father’, my mother said in the final days of her life”.
Gordo’s wealthy secret father, 25 years older than her mother, took the mystery to his grave 30 years ago, until she decided to press her claim in the courts. She said she hoped “that this serves to encourage others like me”.
