Enhanced Contact Rights for Grandparents? A Critical View from Spanish and Catalan Laws

Abstract

1The author is grateful to Marianne Holdgaard and Terje Stordalen for their support and to the participants at the Aalborg Second FamLaPP Annual Conference for their insightful comments and feedback on an earlier version of this article. The anonymous reviewer's guidance has also significantly improved it. Any mistakes remain my own. 2 Except for some limited exceptions, Catalonia is to be treated in family law as a jurisdiction in its own right. The Catalan Civil Code (hereafter CCCat) regulates substantive family legal issues in its second Book (enacted in 2010). The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia hears appeals on family law as a last resort. Spanish and Catalan civil codes bear the same legal value in this paper's subject-matter. 3For instance, France (1970), the Netherlands (1995 or Germany (1998). See the overview provided by G. Kovačec Stanić, 'Personal relationship between the child and his/her grandparents in comparative family law', in: H. Fulchiron (ed.), Les solidarités entre générations -Solidarities between generations,