The Roman Apostolic Church and its manifest cruelty for centuries enjoyed the privilege of holding the monopoly on the registration of baptisms, marriages and deaths, until 1868 when, with the arrival of the insurgents who overthrew Queen Isabel II, the Constitution called the "glorious" was proclaimed, establishing freedom of worship.
As a consequence of this freedom, the Civil Registry would be created in which the data of Spaniards would be recorded, as a recent legal institution independent of ecclesiastical power.
Specifically under the law of June 17, 1870 and its registration regulations, it lasted for more than eight decades until the new law of June 10, 1957 published in the BOE No. 151 in which the long arm of the Catholic Church made an appearance again, under the Franco regime where again the canonical documents would once again be reliable.
A disastrous consequence of the registration monopoly exercised by the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church has been and is the way in which the so-called natural or illegitimate children, abandoned children and those born to mothers who could not demonstrate or declare the name of the father have been marked.
The newborn was baptized and given the mother's surnames (in the best of cases) and generally the qualifying surname of the Exposito (of the exposed, the brought or arrived from outside, derived from the Latinism expositus).
Documents in the archives indicate and it has also been verified, as a member of the management commission designated to occupy the town hall of Sta. Cruz, after the military rebellion of July 18, 1936, Don Vicente Expósito Pérez, to whom I was related by proximity, since he was the stepfather of my beloved grandmother and therefore guardian of her daughters, whose surname Exposito was hidden until his conspicuous social position would lead him to change it to Barrios Pérez.
Thus in Gran Canaria the ecclesiastics as always and anyone knows if in a differentiating eagerness as has happened throughout life in the provinces of the Canary Islands, the one of Expósito was replaced by that of Santa Ana (name of the cathedral), deriving in Santana, where the Expósitos were known as santaneros.
And for that purpose, the author of the sources points out that, given the santanización detected by a judge who had recently arrived in Gran Canaria, when signing some inscriptions of newborns, he objected to the secretary and appealed for an explanation that concluded, as it could not be otherwise, to the unfortunate santanera ecclesial custom, with which such inquinidad produced in that man a revulsive spirit of justice, in the name of the poor innocents, against that affront that would mark them for life and their heirs and ordered ipso facto, that illustrious surnames of Gran Canaria be mentioned to him, being the one chosen to register all these innocents, the surname of Bravo de Laguna (that "parajoda", as Armas Marcelo would say... neither all so illustrious nor all so illustrious).
And it seems that in the different islands such inquinities were followed in the same way, how not, by the ecclesiastical power, using the Sangines, Sanfiel, Santacruz, or de la Santa Cruz, thus marking and identifying all those innocent creatures as "natural" children, marking their descendants with this kind of hereditary finesse.
This lack of Christian charity, practiced by those who being their representatives and with the canon law under their arm, applying these abuses as so many abuses applied in the course of history, normalized this disastrous ecclesial mark, becoming an obstacle in the heraldry, which allow me to laugh, gave rise to so many surnames, that in the end said nothing or said little, deriving in patronymic surnames (of profession) as Alcalde, Cantero, Carnicero, Guerrero, Labrador, or of descriptive surnames as Moreno, Blanco, Rubio, Alegre, Gordo, Delgado, created through nicknames, or as the Montoya, the Heredia Toledano, that far from being all gypsies, were the surnames adopted from their patrons in areas of flourishing business of the Iberian peninsula. Not forgetting either, those who took their surname derived from the professions they practiced, such was the case of the Escriba, Escribá, Escribano, Herrero, Guerrero, or those of geographical origin, such as the Suarez, Duran, Mendez (Asturian) and the Quiroga, Figeroa, Castro, Saavedra (Galician), or Coll, Fontes, Carbonell (Catalan) and among which I highlight as a conclusion, the compound surnames, which far from coming from great heraldry, had a geographical origin, as was the case of Fernandez de Cordoba, Duque de Estrada, Martinez de la Torre, Ortiz de Mendívil, Alvarez de Toledo, de la Vega, del Arroyo, de la Ribera, etc.
Thus it is that between so much delirium and injustice the sanity illuminates with the establishment by means of Decree, that of November 14, 1958 published in the BOE No. 296 of 11/12 within the subsection Fifth that deals with the change or conservation of names and surnames and in which it can be read:
"Art. 209 The judge of First Instance may authorize, after proceedings: the change of the surname Expósito or other similar ones, indicating unknown origin, for another that belongs or, failing that, for a surname of current use".
This law has been gradually modified to adapt it to the new rights proclaimed in the current constitution of Spain and in resolutions emanating in the European legal field.
Thus it is that I have determined to maintain the surname Sanginés, in honor of my father and his father and to the great men who in my particular heraldry conformed the shields of the highest rank in silver fields with a castle of round gules in which the enamels symbolize in their plates obedience, integrity, firmness, vigilance, eloquence and victory. And in its gules strength, victory, audacity, height and artifice, being the Castle the trigger of the greatness and the power used in the defense of the friends and allies, resisting invincible to the enemies.