Agence France-Presse

MADRID - Twin girls who were separated at birth due to a medical error met by chance 28 years later, and one of them is now suing the Spanish hospital involved, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The two were born in a hospital in Gran Canaria, in Spain's Canary Islands, where one of them was switched by mistake with the baby of another family.

Two of the three women involved in the mix-up have grown up in a family that was not their own.

The twins, now aged 35, discovered each other in 2001 in Gran Canaria.

"It happened by chance," thanks to a friend of one of the twins, Sebastian Socorro, the lawyer for the separated twin, told radio Cadena Ser.

"The friend was working in a shopping centre," he said. "The other twin came in one day to buy clothes. The sales assistant tried to greet her with a kiss thinking that she was her friend, but the customer refused.

"The surprised sales assistant then called her friend who assured her that she had not been in to the shop."

When the other twin came back to the shop a few days later, a meeting was arranged between the two sisters.

Socorro said he is seeking three million euros (4.7 million dollars) in damages and interest for his client for the "moral harm" inflicted by the hospital's mistake.