Legal unrest has been on the table for six years now. Andalusian Jose Gonzalez Gonzalez has been trying to get justice since 2016, stating that he has no children and that he is not the biological father of a woman who was ousted in a 1968 ruling in the midst of Franco’s dictatorship. Admits. He was convicted of lawful rape, a crime that has now disappeared. He accuses him of cheating on a young woman by promising to marry her for having sex, for which she becomes pregnant and punishes her with three months in prison, paying 50,000 pesetas and recognizing her daughter. More than half a century later, Jose continues to argue that this is not true and has taken the case to Europe.
The divided Supreme Court has ruled on the matter, so the man has just filed a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, following a failed court trip to Spain. He claims that as early as 1968 he had unsuccessfully appealed to a court which had condemned him for the practice of the only, little credible evidence available at the time. But even at this time, justice has failed to grant him what he demands in a democracy: DNA tests, which he claims ruled out his biological paternity, and which the other side has refused to obey.
“This is a historical injustice that has caused a great deal of suffering to my family and my uncle,” said Sebastian Magro, José’s nephew, who said he “did not act as a father” and “has no responsibility” for his daughter. That he had to admit. The family suspects that this is a “paternity imposed” by “third party interests” in its time, which the other party denies. What happened to Jose does not go beyond a symbolic issue, but it does matter to him: the civil registry should stop showing that he has descendants and allow him to prove it against the “anachronistic” procedure that accused him. Pre-constitutional Spain, he claims.
The 1968 ruling goes so far as to say that the woman was a “young woman with honest customs” and punished Jose for the crime of rape provided by the Franco Criminal Code and punished men who cheated or abused sexual advantage. Relationship with “accredited honest” girls under 23. In particular, the sentence ensures that Jose “mimicked the spirit of his girlfriend by promising marriage” in which he “fully trusted” to have sex with a young woman who was 17 years old.
However the versions of both are different. The man, then 23, who lived in one of Huelva’s towns, claims they never had a relationship and knew him “only” because “he worked as a maid in the house of several wealthy neighbors” in the town. Like many other humble families at the time, in late 1963 Jose was preparing to emigrate to work in Germany, where he learned that he had been criticized and forced to recognize a newborn, according to his history.
For his part, the defendant argues that the attempt to resist paternity is “unfounded” and that the sentence, which condemned Jose, was “the result of the father’s will, to protect his daughter’s honor”, after the pregnancy outside the marriage. They were socially reprimanded. According to his story, the daughter has no contact with Jose “of his own free will” because he “denied paternity and fled.” “It was not a sporadic, covert or fictitious relationship,” she confirmed in response to a lawsuit in which she claimed the relationship ended when Jose “learned of the pregnancy, left her alone” to “avoid responsibility.”
The letter makes it clear that what was also confirmed at the hearing was that he refused the paternity test requested by Jose “for the simple reason”: “Because he has no doubt that Mr. Gonzalez is his father”, for which he believes: That agreeing to this is “doubtful of the mother’s word” and relates to a moral issue. According to a lawsuit filed by Jose at the ECHR, he refused to take the test “seven times” because in 1989 he first tried it in vain through a lawyer.
José exhausted all possible instances in Spain, but both the №7 Court of First Instance and the Huelva Provincial Court dismissed the claim, and the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal. The final step was taken by the Constitutional Court, which ruled inadmissible the Amparo lawsuit filed by him, alleging “a breach of his effective judicial protection” for “depriving him” of the most important and decisive evidence in the decision-making process “. “.
The Supreme Court followed in the footsteps of previous instances. The man demanded renunciation of paternity under Article 140 of the Civil Code, which allows for appeal, and the sixth transitional provision of Law of May 7, 1981, which was approved shortly after the end of the dictatorship. The aim is to “alleviate the excessive difficulties that the previous system posed to the investigation of biological truths,” the Supreme Court acknowledged. The provision states that final adoption decisions “shall not preclude action based solely on evidence or facts provided for in the new legislation for re-implementation”, such as DNA tests.
The case does not fit into this provision for the Supreme Court, but it accepts its “analogous application” because it considers that the reasons which led the legislature to support the reform in 1981 coincided. However, it ensures that the action is not indefinite and uses the term established by Article 140 of the Civil Code, as well as by analogy, to avoid parenthood in certain circumstances. That is, the court asserts that Jose has already had four years to appeal his paternity since 1981.
The Supreme Court statement was not unanimous and the two judges signed a separate ballot in which they disagreed with the ruling and said they agreed with the practice of the biological test. The magistrates criticize the imposition of a maximum term of four years, as “courts are not obliged to impose a term of subscription when the legislator does not do so” and argue that the law would have set a maximum term if it had wanted to. Was done. They also believe that ownership of state ownership should not be equated with that in which it takes place.
The prosecution has also complied with Jose’s complaint, ensuring that “insecurity” occurred with the seizure of biological evidence, which was “clearly relevant and relevant to the resolution of the lawsuit,” he assessed in his letter.
The case is being considered by Amnesty International, specifically a local NGO in Huelva, which believes that the court found Jose “unprotected” in a term similar to “which violates the principle of legal certainty” and “he. Deprives him of the opportunity to prove whether he is biologically related, or “able to prove his innocence in his case,” said Jose Maria Molina Heredia, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International Huelva.
Jose’s family has always suspected that if there was a concealment of biological truth, as they argue, “it must be in the interests of a third party” at the time with greater influence and power, and believed to be mother and child as well. Victims of the society of that time. “I understand that there may be more than an expected obligation on the part of a third party to support this paternity,” said Sebastian, his nephew. “During Catholicism, during the Republic and the Franco regime, it was not uncommon for cockroaches to have low-class lovers and then impose their paternity on others. We must remember that they dominated the social life of the community. Cities “, assures Molina, also a historian.
The family hopes the case will continue in Strasbourg because even though the uncle’s paternity can only be seen on paper, the whole process has “caused excessive and costly suffering” to grandparents, he said. Sebastian is also particularly critical of the Supreme Court’s position that it “prevents them from accessing basic human rights,” he said. “They were not allowed to prove their non-fatherhood before or after the advent of democracy in Spain,” he said.
Source: El Diario
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
