La "i" entre cognoms als registres espanyols i sentències

Resum

Abstract The present article was written in an effort to clarify the details of the case of Mr. Miquel-Jordi Strubell, who appealed to all existing judicial bodies to denounce the violation of the principle of equality of which he was made object when he was denied the right to use his own official language -Catalan- to inscribe his son in the civil register, a negative that extended to the use of the Catalan copulative conjunction i between the paternal and maternal last names. In view of the confusion the press created around the case, the author of the article wishes to clarify the conclusions that can be extracted from it. The legal arguments used to turn down the different appeals submitted by Mr. Strubell go back to the law and regulation of the Civil Register, which were passed in 1958, and which establish that Spanish be the only language to be used at the Register. The General Directorate of Registers and Notaries argued that according to the Spanish Constitution, Spanish citizens have the duty to know Spanish and, therefore, its use in the Register cannot be regarded as discriminatory. Although the Barcelona Territorial Audience recognized the right to use the conjunction i, it did not accept that the Register could inscribe Mr. Strubell's son in Catalan. His subsequent appeals to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court did not change the previous sentence. The author questions the presumption of the courts that the only language of internal use in the registers be Spanish and he accuses them of following the legal spirit of 1958 rather than applying what the Constitution or the statutes of autonomy have established on language matters.