G.T.B. v. SPAIN JUDGMENT A. Admissibility 1. The parties’ submissions (a) Non-exhaustion of domestic remedies 87. The Government submitted that the applicant had not exhausted domestic remedies. He had confined himself to bringing an action for State liability but had never brought any other type of legal proceedings aimed at redressing the allegedly infringed right (for example, against the public authorities which allegedly should have initiated the procedure for registering the applicant’s birth of their own motion, or against the administrative authorities which had allegedly delayed the procedure for him to have his birth registered). Moreover, in the Government’s view, the exorbitant amount of money the applicant was seeking by way of just satisfaction clearly demonstrated that the only reason he had lodged an application with the Court was to obtain money that he had been unable to obtain in Spain, not to remedy or redress the alleged violations of his substantive rights. 88. The applicant submitted that proceedings to establish liability on the part of the public authorities were the most appropriate means of remedying the violation of his right to respect for his private life. (b) Lack of victim status 89. The Government stated that it was crucial to emphasise that the person who had had the responsibility for registering the applicant’s birth without delay was his mother. In particular, pursuant to the Spanish Law on the Civil Registry as in force at the time (see paragraph 72 above), the mother was obliged to request the registration between twenty-four hours and eight days following the child’s birth. Instead, it had taken Ms X more than twelve years to appear at the Civil Registry to request the registration of the applicant’s birth in Mexico in 1985. Registration at a time closer to the birth would have facilitated the bureaucratic procedure, and the applicant would have already been registered and identified at the time of his expatriation to Spain from Mexico. The Government argued that the twelve-year delay in complying with that obligation had had a significant impact on the processing of the registration, by increasing the difficulty of proving the circumstances in which the birth had taken place given the time that had elapsed and the distance. They submitted that, had Ms X complied with her obligation to request the registration within the legal time-limit, the subsequent difficulties and the consequent delay in the registration would not have occurred. Furthermore, the processing of the case had been at a standstill from March 1999, as it had been impossible to summon Ms X because she was unknown at the address provided for that purpose, until 16 May 2002, when she had again applied to the La Laguna Civil Registry to register the birth of her children. In that connection, the Government argued that the applicant could 24