Information Note on the Court’s case-law 11
October 1999
De la Ciera y Osorio de Mosoco and Others v. Spain (dec.) - 45726/99, 41127/98, 41503/98 et al.
Decision 28.10.1999 [Section IV]
Article 14
Discrimination
Precedence of male heirs in inheritance of titles of nobility: inadmissible
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for family life
Precedence of male heirs in inheritance of titles of nobility: inadmissible
Article 1 of Protocol No. 1
Article 1 para. 1 of Protocol No. 1
Possessions
Precedence of male heirs in inheritance of titles of nobility: inadmissible
In Spain, titles of nobility are passed down in the first place to male heirs. The four applicants are female and are each the firstborn of a noble family. They all brought unsuccessful court proceedings challenging the transmission of titles to their younger brothers. On an appeal by the first applicant, the Constitutional Court gave a ruling on the conformity of the relevant legal provisions with the constitutional principle of non-discrimination. The court, noting the purely symbolic nature of noble titles and the fact that they have no legal significance in the contemporary Spanish legal system, held that amending the rules of law governing their transmission in order to comply with the principle of the equality of the sexes would be to introduce anachronistic requirements into a practice moulded by history.
Inadmissible under Article 8 and, consequently Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 8. Unlike surnames and forenames, noble titles did not fall within the scope of the Convention. They were entered on the civil status register but merely as “additional information”: inadmissible ratione materiae.
Inadmissible under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 and, consequently, Article 14 read in conjunction with Article 1 of Protocol No. 1: Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 applied only to existing possessions and did not guarantee the right to acquire possessions by way of succession (see the judgments in the cases of Marckx v. Belgium, Series A no. 31, p. 23, and Van der Mussele v. Belgium, Series A no. 70, p. 22). A legitimate expectation of acquiring a possession depended on the agreement of a third party. A noble title could not be considered as a possession within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1. The possibility that a title could be commercially exploited, for example as a brand name, was not enough to make it a possession for the purposes of that provision: inadmissible ratione materiae.
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