Changes to Spain's civil registry

Spain’s historical cornerstone of family life, the Libro de Familia and the Libros de Registro will disappear once the Government has approved a new system of single Civil Registry.

The new digital, computerized records will be used for births, marriages, divorces and deaths, and the proposed changes were announced last week following the weekly cabinet meeting held by the Minister for Justice, Francisco Caamaño.

He said the current system, which has been in place since 1957, was being changed throughout and that the new electronic register had been designed ‘thinking of the people’ and simplified to speed up the whole process. He said generally it would be the health centres, town halls and judicial bodies which would be given the responsibility of updating a person’s information in this revamped Civil Registry.