G.T.B. v. SPAIN JUDGMENT 35. On 3 March 1999 Ms X presented her birth certificate and her passport but claimed that she lacked any official documents to prove her children’s births as they had been born at home in Mexico. 36. On 31 March 1999 the Central Civil Registry issued a request to the Tenerife Civil Registry to summon Ms X and her children for the purpose of “recognition” of the minor children by their mother, and to initiate proceedings to grant Spanish nationality to the applicant’s elder brother. The Central Civil Registry instructed the Tenerife Civil Registry to publish the corresponding decrees and to have Ms X, the applicant and his brother examined by a forensic doctor. Lastly, it requested a report on the possibility to proceed to registering their birth from the public prosecutor’s office. 37. The request could not be executed because it proved impossible to summon Ms X, who could not be found and notified at the address she had indicated for those purposes in her application. 38. The procedure was suspended for several years. 39. On 26 December 2001 the police issued a report stating that an ID card in respect of the applicant’s brother could not be issued pending submission of outstanding documents. C. From 2002 to 2006 40. On 16 May 2002 Ms X appeared at the La Laguna Civil Registry and requested the late registration of the births of her children, stating that she had not provided the requested certificates because in her opinion the children should have been registered at the Spanish embassy when they had been repatriated, that the documents must have been destroyed by the earthquake in Mexico, and that she only had documents concerning herself but that the children had been included in her passport in order to proceed with the repatriation in 1985. 41. On 5 August 2002 the Central Civil Registry instituted a new procedure for the late registration of the births in respect of the applicant and his brother. Ms X was asked to present the Mexican birth certificates for her sons, which she was instructed to request from the Consular Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 42. On 23 October 2002 Ms X appeared at the La Laguna Civil Registry and stated that she did not have any birth certificates and that the children had not been registered in their country of birth, Mexico, as she had already explained on 16 May 2002. 43. On 5 February 2003 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain informed Ms X that she needed to indicate at least the municipality and the date on which her sons had been born in Mexico so that it could ask the Spanish consulate in Mexico to search for their birth certificates in that country. 44. On 15 January 2004 the La Laguna Civil Registry requested the Consular Affairs Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to search for 7