21 April 2014
Bilbao Campus
The Civil Registry reform which changes the order of surnames will go into effect on 22 July. This change has prompted Prof. Tomás to write the abovementioned opinion article in El País as well as the chapter in the book.
In the article, Prof. Tomás discusses the current practice for the order of surnames in Spain and compares it with neighbouring countries.
“In contrast to other EU member countries, we bear two surnames. This obliges us to decide which one goes first, and while parents are free to choose the given name, by law it is filiation that determines the surname,” states Prof. Tomás in her article.
Today’s society has undergone profound changes and both men and women play a role in building the family heritage. This progress questions the traditional order of surnames. This Law professor gives an overview of the current situation and examines the issue from the gender perspective:
“Underlying these changes is the need to overcome the discrimination against maternal surnames. Placing the mother's surname second means that it disappears in the following generation and is gradually lost".
However, Prof. Tomás also raises questions about the new panorama posed by changing this regulation: “With a view to advancing gender equality, this legal reform establishes that the parents can decide the order. If they should fail to do so due to lack of agreement or simply do not choose, the child's surnames will be recorded in the Civil Registry according to the "child's best interest". However, what is the child’s best interest and how can this be found out? It is obviously no easy task and in most cases neither of the two surnames entails "interest" for the child. Would it not have been better to apply objective criteria or even random choice?
Gemá Tomás examines the history behind this topic and goes back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See the complete article
