Asunta Basterra Porto

Asunta Basterra was born Fang Yong in 2000 in Yongzhou, Hunan, China. At nine months old she was adopted by Alfonso Basterra Camporro (b. 1964) and Maria del Rosario Porto Ortega (b. 1969 - d. 2020), an affluent Spanish couple from Santiago de Compostela, Galicia. Asunta was the first Chinese child to be adopted in the city of Santiago and one of the first in all of Galicia. Asunta was said to have been a gifted child, being a talented ballet dancer, violinist, and piano player who skipped a year in school. She was also very close to her maternal grandparents, who died the year before her death.

Asunta's adoptive mother, Rosario Porto, came from a prominent Galician family. Her father, lawyer Francisco Porto Mella (d. 2012), was an honorary consul of France. Her mother, María del Socorro Ortega (died 2011), was a highly regarded university lecturer of art history. Porto studied law at the University of Santiago de Compostela and practiced at her father's firm after graduation. She also claimed to have attended the London High School of Law in England, which The Guardian confirmed does not exist. In 1997 she was appointed consul of France, inheriting the role from her father.

Porto met journalist Alfonso Basterra, a native of Bilbao, in 1990. The two married in 1996 and lived in a large flat that had been given to Porto by her parents. In 2001 they travelled to China and adopted 9-month-old Asunta from the Guiyang Welfare Institute. In January 2013 the couple separated and Basterra moved to an apartment around the corner from the family flat. Asunta split her time between the two homes, walking the short distance between them.