History Alfonso XIII, the king who died forgotten in exile and pronouncing "My God, Spain"
Family The queen of Spain who was so insulted when she went into exile as she was cheered on the only day she returned
Gonzalo de Borbón,
Duke of Aquitaine, whose
death
is 21 years old this May 27, was one of the
iconic characters
of coated paper in our country, and lived his stellar moments in the beginnings of democracy. Son of the infant Don Jaime, who
renounced his rights to the Crown because of his deafness
and first cousin of Don Juan Carlos, he was the
only brother of the Duke of Cádiz,
whom he adored despite the fact that their personalities were opposite.
Gonzalo had everything that was measured and circumspect about Alfonso, who was
tongue-
in-
cheek and spontaneous.
He did not shy away from
selling exclusives
on his weddings or on
his secret daughter,
Estefanía, and even collaborating in magazines of the cuore giving an account of his adventures.
An admirer of beautiful women,
better if they were models,
and a regular in Madrid's nightlife, which in those years went from goose to goose between the
Vanity nightclub and the Mau Mau,
Gonzalón
, as his intimates nicknamed him, was an
inexhaustible source of anecdotes .
A memorable one occurred during a Christmas lunch organized by don Juan in the royal palace after
returning from Estoril,
which added 101
Bourbon
relatives
. Which led Gonzalo to exclaim before the royal aristocratic, Reyes Juan Carlos and Sofía included.
"We are 101, like Dalmatians."
Frivolity that surely was
an escape from his sad childhood,
marked by the resignation of his rights to the Spanish throne of his father, Don Jaime, whose deafness pushed
Alfonso XIII
to order him to give
them to his younger brother,
Don Juan, which subsequently led the Duke of Cádiz to
maneuver against his cousin Don Juan Carlos.
"Without that dynastic ambiguity, Alfonso and Gonzalo would have been the favorites of the whole family for the feeling that their helplessness produced in us," said Infanta Cristina, don Juan's sister, on one occasion.
And above all because of
the violent separation in 1947 of their parents,
Don Jaime and Emmanuela Dampierre, which
separated Alfonso and Gonzalo from their family and from Rome, the
city of Bourbon exile where they were born and lived their childhood.
With his brother Alfonso (left) and his sister-in-law, Carmen Martínez-Bordiú.GTRES
They landed at
a Swiss boarding school,
Ville Saint Jean de Freiburg, their only home warmth being
visits to their grandmother,
Queen Victoria Eugenia
,
who lived in Lausanne, until in 1954, they returned to Spain with Franco's permission. Gonzalo was 17 years old when they settled in Madrid, although he later
studied physics
at the Bilbao University of Deusto and later served as a
senior banking executive
in New York and Manila.
His brother's wedding in 1972 with
Carmen Martínez-Bordiú,
Franco's
granddaughter
, led to his
rise to the Franco regime's circle of trust,
occupying positions such as vice president of the Spanish-Italian Chamber of Commerce or president of the insurance company La Providence.
Also, he was already pointing out ways, he was named honorary president of Piccadilly, the first boîte
Madrid
with live music.
It was in the 80s, after Franco died, when
he let his hair loose,
marrying in 1983 in Mexico with a journalist, Carmen Harto, a
marriage that lasted only two months,
and a year later,
with the Valencian model Mercedes Licer
in the Valladolid town of Olmedo.
Union with exclusive means
that until the divorce in 1986 gave great media play, since Licer, who dreamed of an existence between crowned heads, did not stop to
air his frustration.
"Mine with Zarzuela has no remedy," she assured annoyed at the emptiness of the royal family. The most famous episode was when the Duke of Aquitaine unveiled in 1983 in
Hello!
the existence of a secret daughter, Estefanía,
The result of his relationship with the American Sandra Lee, who in the end would be
his only heir.
Gonzalo and his second wife, Mercedes Licer, in the 1980s.
This playful decade for Gonzalo de Borbón ended with
a tragedy that changed his life:
the death of his brother Alfonso in a
ski accident
on the slopes of Colorado on January 30, 1989 when a cable cut off his jugular.
It was King Juan Carlos himself who, greatly affected, telephoned him to give him the tragic news, sending a DC-8 from the army to
repatriate his body,
which lies today in the Madrid monastery of Las Descalzas Reales
with his son Francisco, who
died in accident years before.
Gonzalo de Borbón
embraced in his memory the French legitimist cause,
today represented by his nephew, Luis Alfonso, Duke of Anjou, who took the paternal witness as heir to the legacy of the French monarchs.
The Duke of Aquitaine
contracted a third marriage in 1992
with a wealthy and discreet Genoese, Emmanuela Pratolongo, who gave him sentimental stability and with which
he settled in Switzerland,
where he died in May 2000 at the age of 63 from
a fulminant leukemia.
Today his remains also lie in the Madrid monastery of the Descalzas Reales, together with his brother Alfonso, whom he always adored and considered
"his only family".
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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