A teenager is demanding €3million (£2.5million) in compensation after learning she was swapped at birth with another baby almost 20 years ago.

The now 19-year-old was switched in a maternity ward at a hospital in the La Rioja region of Spain in 2002.

The mix-up came to light by chance after one of the women took a DNA test and discovered she was not genetically related to her presumed mother and father.

It happened after she and another baby were both born underweight and placed in incubators, before being handed to the wrong parents.

Spanish medics have blamed the incident on “human error”.

The 19-year-old is now taking legal action against local health authorities.

Sara Alba, health chief of Spain’s northern La Rioja region, told a news conference: “It was a human error and we haven’t been able to find out who was to blame.

“The systems back then were different and weren’t as computerised as they are now.”

Ms Alba offered assurances such an incident could not happen again.

She spoke out after a local newspaper, La Rioja, published a report about the switch on Tuesday.

The other woman who was given to the wrong parents has also been told about the mistake, according to the newspaper.

Neither of the two women have been identified.

Two young French women who were mistakenly switched at birth were awarded €400,000 (£297,000) each after being sent home with the wrong parents in 1994.

Both questioned the identity of the infant they had been handed – despite the nurse insisting no mistake had been made.

The devastating truth emerged a decade later when one of the mothers took a DNA test.

A woman at the centre of an infamous baby switch case in the US in 1995 revealed how she was still furious with the hospital 18 years on.

Paula Johnson learned in 1998 how Callie, the baby girl she raised for three years, was not her daughter.

“I’m angry because I don’t have a relationship with my biological child,” she said in 2013.

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