G.T.B. v. SPAIN JUDGMENT
the procedures for registering the applicant’s birth with the Central Civil
Registry, the fact was that all the procedures that had been initiated since 1997
could not be processed at some point because of Ms X’s inactivity, or the
absence of documents that should have been in her possession, or the
impossibility to find her at the address she had indicated for that purpose. In
the Council of State’s view, the delays caused by such circumstances could
not be attributed to the public authorities. The Council of State emphasised
that the procedure for late birth registration had been initiated for the last time
in May 2002. After the failure of the Spanish Consular Registry in Mexico to
find any birth certificates and the applicant’s mother’s acknowledgment that
she had never registered him there, the procedure had been resolved by means
of a certificate of recognition of the children by Ms X, after which their birth
registration had finally been approved on 13 March 2006 and the registration
had been carried out on the following 5 April 2006. In short, the delay could
not be attributable to the Ministry of Justice, since the delays in conducting
the procedure were the result of actions or omissions by Ms X or the
impossibility to provide documentation the loss or the lack of which was not
attributable to the public authorities.
63. On 20 July 2006 the Ministry of the Presidency, in accordance with
the proposal of the Ministries of the Interior and Justice and with the opinion
issued by the Council of State, decided to reject the applicant’s claim for State
liability. The decision stated, in particular, the following:
“[D]espite all the references contained in the medical reports on the effects that the
failure to obtain an ID card has had on the applicant’s mental health, it should be pointed
out that no objection can be made to the only action of the Ministry of the Interior
identified in the complaint, which was to issue an ID card of the interested party, given
that this was carried out without any delay and in compliance with the requisite
standards once the interested party met the requirements for obtaining the card and had
proved this. The fact that it was impossible for [the applicant] to obtain the ID card was
only the inevitable consequence of not being in possession of the necessary birth
certificate as he had not been registered at birth, and therefore no liability can be
attributed to the services of the Ministry of the Interior as the damage alleged by the
applicant are not causally linked to the actions of those services.
...
The applicant claims that the lack of documentation proving his identity is the cause
of the very serious illness from which he suffers, arguing that this has had repercussions
on his physical and mental health since, lacking a national ID card and family record
book, he was unable to attend school properly and could not access the level of
education corresponding to his age, which led to his social isolation and was, in turn,
the cause of various criminal behaviours, making it impossible for him to achieve a
stable life. However, although he did not provide the report which allegedly diagnosed
him with paranoid schizophrenia, according to the forensic medical report of 23 May
2014, the applicant’s pathological history includes behavioural disorders since the age
of 11 and cannabinoid use in adolescence and, according to the report of 29 November
2014 of the General Psychiatry Service of the University Hospital of the Canary Islands
in La Laguna, a maternal uncle suffering from paranoid schizophrenia as part of the
family psychiatric history. It is clear from the foregoing that it cannot be concluded that
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