LA NUEVA REDACCIÓN DEL ARTÍCULO 30 DEL CÓDIGO CIVIL Y LA CREACIÓN DE UN ARCHIVO ESPECIAL PARA HACER CONSTAR LOS FALLECIMIENTOS CON POSTERIORIDAD A LOS SEIS MESES DE GESTACIÓN EN LA LEY 20/2011, DE 21 DE JULIO, DEL REGISTRO CIVIL.

Abstract

The paper begins with a general introduction to Act 20/2011 of 21 July on the Civil Register. The act was passed with a broad consensus by all parliamentary groups. Throughout its 100 sections, it establishes a new system of organisation for the civil registration system in Spain. This act constitutes one of the most important social and legal reforms ever made in personal and family law since the Constitution went into effect. The act configures a civil registration system that keeps track of individual people throughout their legal continuity in the vein of De Castro. It required the amendment of article 30 of the Civil Code, which had to be adapted to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and European legislation. The paper fundamentally looks at the arguments that constituted the theoretical framework beneath the re-writing of article 30 of the Civil Code. These arguments largely chime with the arguments I upheld in an article published in 1998. On the basis of the stated arguments and the parliamentary debates on the subject (in which the Directorate-General of Registries and Notarial Affairs played a very important encouraging role), a new wording of article 30 prospered, under which personality is acquired at the moment of live birth after full detachment from the mother's womb. The legal requirements set in the original wording of article 30 -the requirement of having «human shape» and «twenty-four hours' extra-uterine life»- were repealed. The paper also addresses the elimination of the stillbirth record by Act 20/2011 on the Civil Registry and the creation, underadditional provision four of the new Registration Act, of a Civil Registry file of dead foetuses with more than 180 days' gestation, to whom the parents may give a name. The reform of one of the weightiest rules in the Civil Code and the creation of the special file go much further than their implications for registration, because they link birth with the recognition of personality and with the categories of personality and legal standing.