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“Government unleashes war on surnames”, leads El Periódico de Catalunya, on the ruling socialist party’s attempt to extend its “equality policy” to family names. In Spain where names are frequently double-barrelled - the father’s surname appearing before the mother’s - a reform allowing parents to choose a child’s surname order was rejected by parliament on 3 November. The Barcelona daily defends the measure as "a step towards equality between men and women", but considers that it would be wiser "to establish a lottery to decide the surname position", as is the case in Germany. The Spanish reform, in the case of no agreement between parents, ruled that surnames would have been attributed in alphabetical order.
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