Livingston mum-to-be who feared giving birth in Spanish jail is back home

‘We’ll never know why Spanish authorities chose to be so harsh’

A mum-to-be who feared she would have to have her baby in a Spanish jail after being locked up after failing to pay a holiday fine has returned home to Scotland.

Jamielee Fielding, 32, from Livingston, was arrested when she arrived in Tenerife on August 19 after she flew in to join her father and brother for a family holiday. She had left Spain last year without paying a 420 euro fine for drunken behaviour in Malaga. Despite offering to pay the fine there and then, she was taken to court and sentenced to four months’ imprisonment.

She feared she would have to give birth to her daughter in jail. She said at the time: “She's due on 28 November and I've pretty much been told to prepare to have her here. All I want is to be back home in a Scottish hospital with my family around me to have a safe birth and make sure she is healthy.”

Now Livingston SNP MP Hannah Bardell, who took up the case, has confirmed Ms Fielding is back home. Ms Bardell, who travelled to Spain with Ms Fielding’s father, tweeted: “Pleased to say I have some good news. Earlier last week, before I headed to Parliament, I travelled along with her dad (at my own cost) to support my constituent JamieLee- to get home. And to ensure a smooth & safe passage home from Tenerife. It’s been a difficult and upsetting time for her since she lost her mum last year, now I hope she can look to the future. Wishing her & her family all the very best and hope her baby arrives safely in the coming weeks.”

She thanked Foreign Office staff for their help and added: “I’m glad the Spanish authorities finally saw sense and I hope that some lessons will be learned about fair and proper treatment of foreign nationals in Spain.”

Ms Bardell told the BBC that Ms Fielding was "pretty shaken up" when she returned to West Lothian but determined to look to the future. She added: "I have absolutely no doubt she is going to make an incredible mum and she has a fantastic support network round her. I am just so delighted and relieved to have her back on Scottish soil.

"The truth is I will never know, and I don't think any of us will ever know, why the Spanish authorities chose to be so harsh."

Jamieliee Fielding feared she was going to have to give birth in a Spanish jail.

Ms Fielding spent the first six weeks of her sentence in the maximum security jail which she described as "a living hell". She said the toilet was a hole in the ground and she was given a piece of foam to sleep on.

In November last year, Ms Fielding spoke to the Evening News about her efforts to raise funds for a private investigator to look into the death in Spain of her mum Sharon, 50, who ran the Gentleman Jack’s food stall in Edinburgh’s Princes Street for 10 years. She said she was first told her mother had fallen on the street and died from a head injury on the way to hospital, but the death certificate recorded pulmonary oedema – fluid in the lungs’ air sacs – as the cause of death. And when she went to identify her mother’s body the left side of her head was “all caved and dented in” and there was no explanation of why she had been walking at the side of a busy motorway.