A friend recently sent me this story, which comes from the Canary Islands:

The case of twins separated at birth seems more like a Hollywood script than real life. However, once again, reality exceeds the imagination.

36 years ago, twin sisters (the names were not released) were born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and at the same time, another girl was born at the same hospital. But the twins were mixed up and went to different families. One returned home with her biological parents. The other newborn girl and the other twin went to the biological family of the third child.

Now a court has decided to fine the local Government 360,000 euros to compensate the twin sister who has lived all her life apart from their biological family. It decided that a medical error had happened in the nursery of the old hospital Nuestra Senora del Pino in the capital of Gran Canaria in March 1973.

It also told the government to pay 180,000 euros to the other twin who did live with her biological mother.

The mistake only came to light in 2001 when one of the sisters was in a shop in a mall. There she met a friend of her lost twin. She thought it strange that the woman failed to greet her. She complained to a friend how upset she was.

This eventually reached the other twin who she denied that she had gone to buy any clothes. A few days later, the lost twin returned to the store to return a garment. When she saw her, the shop assistant could not resist asking her who she was. They were too alike to be a coincidence. Three days later she introduced the two women. "They were like two peas in a pod," said the friend.

The two were struck by how similar they looked and found also that they had been born in the same year, at the same hospital, but three days apart. One of them said she did have a twin sister she didn't look very much like her.

Seeing such a similarity, a DNA test was proposed. At first she refused. However, in 2004 the uncertainty made her so nervous that she took a DNA test which proved that the women were identical twins.

These tests changed the lives of the two families. The separated twin was awarded twice as much because she had been ill and she would not have suffered so much had she known that she had a twin sister. It was determined that the third woman was born three days earlier.