Unwanted and tags all over the theme

Hello.

I recently discovered that the output of my wordpress theme is filled with lots of empty A and P tags. I am not referring to the ones added by the html editor when a line break is added.

This blank A tags are all over, not only in content. Wrapping on some elements of the sidebar, in footer, etc. I checked for them, in the PHP there are no such tags, but they are found in the output html page.

I tried targeting them with a a:not([href]) and it worked, but in the process I eliminated some of the themes elements that the A tag wrapped to.

What can I do to get reed of them? Any ideas? Please help.

My theme is a 2010 modified, but with the same structure. SO no considerable additions to it.