- Lives. A Cuban, a disease ... The story of the true successor of Alfonso XIII who would have prevented his nephew, Don Juan Carlos, from reigning.
35 years have passed since the mortal remains of Jaime de Borbón and Battenberg were transferred to the Escorial pantheon of infants. It was the place that corresponded to him for his eternal rest as the second son of the kings Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia de Battenberg, Ena. Although the second king was about to achieve dynastic glory because he came to dream of being nothing less than king of Spain or, at least, that his son, Alfonso de Borbón and Dampierre, was the father of the unclassifiable Luis Alfonso. Bourbon,who today walks the world as Louis XX, Duke of Anjou, recognized as the king of law of France by the legitimists -in rabid rivalry with the Orleanists-, although in Spain he is not recognized as a prince, much less his alleged treatment of Royal Highness.
Jaime de Borbón y Battenberg was a tormented infant , who suffered not a few hardships of the soul, although he also stood out for a special sensitivity and ability to overcome that earned him great praise in his time, especially in the years of youth when neither he nor nobody imagined the exile of the Spanish royal family ; the advent of the Second Republic, the renunciation of his dynastic rights by our protagonist's brother, the Prince of Asturias, Alfonso de Borbón and Battenberg; Alfonso XIII's maneuver to grant the crown to Don Juan, father of who would reign as Juan Carlos I; and so many other events that mark an exciting biography. In her there is certainly no lack of family betrayals , an unhappy marriage with the very resentful Emanuela Dampierre marked by infidelities and even a death in strange circumstances never fully clarified.
Jaime Leopoldo Isabelino Enrique Alejandro Alberto Alfonso Víctor Acacio Pedro Pablo María de Borbón y Battenberg -with this string of names he was baptized- came to the world on June 23, 1908 in La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia), the palace to which the Kings they used to move at the end of each spring. By then, the marriage of his parents, Alfonso XIII and the English Victoria Eugenia was already broken. And not only because of the monarch's constant infidelities, but also because of the great disappointment and suffering that it had caused him to know that his first offspring, the heir to the throne -who had been born a year before Jaime-, suffered from the damn disease, the evil of the kings, the crystal skin, hemophilia, come on.
Historians agree that Jaime was born with an infection in his inner ear that worsened over the months and that condemned him to a progressive loss of hearing. And, apparently, at the age of four, after undergoing an operation to try to cure a mastoiditis, he was completely deaf. What was then considered a physical deficiency that in circles like that of the Court was even embarrassing, completely marked the life of the Infante, who grew up as a quite withdrawn person , very introspective, calm and sensitive.
The Kings did the unspeakable to try to cure their son's deafness , subjecting him to the most advanced treatments of the time, sending him to doctors in different parts of Europe. All in vain. He was educated at the Palace by two nuns who had pedagogy experience with deaf and blind girls in Madrid. And the strict formation of the religious gave great results, since the Infant learned lip reading and to speak Spanish. This allowed him throughout his life to understand at least what an interlocutor was saying to him, although he was never able to participate, of course, in group conversations and in the social gatherings he had to attend as his rank he always felt somewhat displaced. He would become able to express himself more or less in French, English, German, and Italian. Jaime supplied the limitation that deafness represented with a great ability to overcome and gave himself up to his main hobbies, such as sports - to the envy of his older brother, Alfonso, who could barely move for fear of suffering the slightest scratch that would make him bleed to death. - or art .
In 1921 a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece was created ; in 1925 he received the Great Necklace of the Order of Carlos III ; and in 1931 that of the Order of Isabel la Católica, at the same time that he was a great commander of the Order of Calatrava. Those were the times when don Jaime also represented his father, the king, in different official acts of the Crown.
The life of all the Bourbons took a 180 degree turn in 1931 with the proclamation of the Second Republic and the forced exile of the entire royal family to France, which ended up settling in Fontaineblau. The Infante then completed his training at the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Paris.
Alfonso XIII kept alive the hope of recovering the throne and was loved by all kinds of intriguers who came to compliment him in France, from where they saw the difficulties faced by the new republican regime. And, despite hemophilia, the king continued to see his eldest son as Prince of Asturias and, therefore, as successor to the Crown. But to Don Alfonso the Parisian airs and the atmosphere of the Swiss sanatorium where he was confined for some time must have made him see that the Madrid throne was already far away. And, in love with the wealthy Cuban of Spanish origin Edelmira Sampedro y Robato, on June 11, 1933 he formally renounced his dynastic rights, for himself and for his descendants, in order to be able to marry the woman he had fallen in love with and that for the first time in a long time made him feel happy, although the joy would not last in this case not in the house of the poor but in that of the rich.
That historical resignation turned our protagonist, the infant Jaime, automatically into the Prince of Asturias. For 10 days he was the legitimate heir to the Spanish Crown. But Alfonso XIII did not see his second son, a deaf man incapable of even having a telephone conversation, as his successor, and less before the great company that the Bourbons faced to try to regain the throne. So the king maneuvered and forced Don Jaime to renounce his dynastic rights , for himself and his descendants. The monarch's main advisers in exile - among them José Calvo Sotelo, the Duke of Miranda, the Count of Riudoms and the Marquis of Torres Mendoza - persuaded the infant, who had always been malleable in character and who felt respect for his father bordering on fear - quite different was the affection he felt for his mother, Ena, or even his brothers. Alfonso XIII promised his son that his economic well-being would be guaranteed for life and granted him the title of Duke of Segovia so that he would depart forever from the line of succession. His place was taken by his brother Juan. There is the origin of the story that in 1975 would seat Juan Carlos I on the throne.
There is also the origin of the story that stars the aforementioned Luis Alfonso de Borbón. Because the renunciation of the rights to the Spanish throne did not include the historical rights to the throne of France, as head of the Bourbons who at that time was Don Jaime. And, in fact, the legitimists considered him since then as a Gallic king of law, as would happen later, at his death, with his successors, his eldest son, the Duke of Cádiz, and the latter, his son Luis Alfonso -descendant to his turn from the dictator Franco, whose mother Carmen Martínez-Bordiú is very grand.
The way in which don Jaime's resignation and the recognition of don Juan took place was questionable in many respects. And Alfonso XIII himself knew it. Therefore, not being enough with that act, he immediately set to work to marry the infant. And it did not take him long to arrange the marriage with the aristocrat Emanuela de Dampierre (1913-2012), daughter of the Viscount of Dampierre and the ambitious princess Vittoria Ruspoli. Why was this wedding important to Alfonso XIII? Because it was a morganatic, unequal marriage, and that amounted in practice to the loss of the inheritance rights to the throne of Don Jaime, in case the act of his resignation was considered null. Let us not forget that it was the 1930s. It would take several decades for a commoner named Letizia to marry the Prince of Asturias without causing any dynastic problems.
Don Jaime and Emanuela were married in 1935 in Rome. And they would have two children: the taciturn Alfonso and Gonzalo. It was a stormy marriage and plagued by apparently mutual infidelities . And in time the always resentful Emanuela would tell details of her husband whom she came to paint as a true sexually obsessed patient from whom she had to hide for hours to avoid her predatory claws.
The marriage of the Dukes of Segovia was annulled in 1946. And, a year later, Don Jaime would meet the love of his life, Carlota Tiedemann, a German opera singer twice divorced and 11 years younger than the infant. They were married in 1949. Historians agree that this second woman gave him enough courage to dismiss his resignation from the throne and to launch a campaign to recover his supposed rights as head of the dynasty. Those were times when don Jaime's social life had exploded and he lived through a hard public confrontation with his brother don Juan, which led him to claim large sums of money that, he said, were due to him as inheritance once Alfonso XIII died.
It is known that Don Jaime maneuvered before Franco, presenting himself as the legitimate dynastic leader and aspirant to the Spanish throne. He did not renounce his desires until 1969 , when the dictator finally appointed the then Prince of Spain, Don Juan Carlos, as his successor. Don Jaime then took a step back, fulfilling the request of his own son Alfonso, although he did not deprive himself of signing a harsh letter against Franco's decision.
The delusions of grandeur that characterized our protagonist in the last times of his biography were fueled by the wedding of his first-born and Carmencita, the very granddaughter, in 1972. That link, with the pomp of any royal marriage, made Don Jaime dream. with which his son could end up becoming king of Spain, which supposed the restoration of the dynastic line to which he had renounced decades before in moments of special emotional weakness.
Don Jaime, with the strutting that allowed him in Francoist Spain to become related to the Caudillo, also acted as great commander of the order of the Fleece, much to the chagrin of his brother don Juan and his nephew, Don Juan Carlos, allowing himself to deliver Fleeces like the one given in 1972 to Franco himself, although he never wore it.
The infant died on March 20, 1975 in St. Gallen (Switzerland). For a few months he did not see his nephew Juan Carlos proclaimed King. According to the official version, he suffered a fall in the middle of the street while walking his dog, which caused fatal injuries. But other experts, such as José María Zavala, point out that he was actually attacked with a bottle by his wife, causing a skull fracture that killed him after several days of agony.
Today it rests, as we said, in the Pantheon of Infants. Although he dreamed in life of his right to occupy when his time came, his position in the Pantheon of Kings.
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