i have been told a few times that a Spaniard could use the last names of multiple generations, for example "Rey Fernandez Pico........" as far back as they could remember. Has anyone else ever heard of this?
Short answer is: No, Spaniards have two and only two surnames, one coming from mother's and the other from father's.
There are nuances to the above said.
One person can officially join their two surnames, creating a compound surname. This is usually done by people who:
- has a very common first surname like Fernandez, Lopez, Rodriguez... and a not so usual second one, and want the latter to be propagated to their children.
- has the time and the money to do the paperwork in the Ministry of Justice.
In this case, the compound surname is made by joining both and hyphenating them.
Example: Mr. Juan Fernandez Pico (son of Juan Fernandez Whatever) is in this situation. He can legally change his name to Juan Fernandez-Pico Whatever (the father's second surname is now taken as second surname, as we all have to have two surnames) and all his descendants will inherit Fernandez-Pico as surname. This avoids the Pico to be lost.
In some other cases, a surname is not a single word, but it is not a compound, just a multi-word surname, like "Ruiz de la Prada", for instance (kind of the Dutch "Van der Whatever")