León v. Spain at the European Court of Human Rights 

León v. Spain at the European Court of Human Rights 
Photo: Opinio Juris/ European Court of Human Rights 

Roos Willemijn Craanen 

International Justice and Human Rights Researcher

Global Human Rights Defence 

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) found the inability of a mother to change the order of surnames to list the maternal surname first, discriminatory and a violation of Article 14 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerns the daughter of the applicant (Josefa León Madrid) who was born in 2005. The father wished that León Madrid to abort the child and only recognised his daughter two years after she was born. The applicant sought to give her daughter her last name first, before her paternal surname. The Spanish Courts denied León Madrid’s request, stating that the when there is a dispute, the paternal surname is listed first.  

According to the ECtHR, the Spanish law is discriminatory because it offers no exceptions to the rule that the paternal last time is listed prior to the maternal last name. In the Court’s view, this amounted to a violation of Article 14 and 8 of the ECHR.  As powerfully stated by the Court: “[The law] was excessively stringent and discriminatory (...) while placing the paternal surname first could serve the purpose of legal certainty, the same could be served by (...) the maternal surname (HUDOC, 2021, p. 3). With this, the Court clarified that not in every case the listing of the paternal lastname amounts to discrimination. 

For further reading and source:

Registrar of the Court. (26 October 2021). Automatic Imposition of Surname Order, Paternal Followed by Maternal, When Parents Disagree, is Discriminatory. The European Court of Human Rights. http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng-press?i=003-7163424-9717430.