LEFT ROMUALDO
Updated Saturday, June 18, 2022-00:48
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
send by email
Comment
Obituary Carlos Falcó, Marquis of Griñón, victim of the coronavirus dies
Aristocracy Carlos and Fernando Falcó, destiny united until the death of the dandies of the aristocracy
Nobility Fernando Falcó, Marquis of Cubas, dies, seven months after the death of his brother Carlos
"A Poooorsche! And it's orange in color!" Some of Carmen Posadas' classmates warned between giggles at the door of the school in the Chamartín neighborhood, in Madrid,
where they were preparing to enter the University.
"And he is the Marquis of Cubas, soooo big! How horrible!"
, added the chorus of young people who had not yet turned 18 and who watched his partner get into Fernando Falcó's vehicle.
It was not the first time.
The "playboy marquis", as he was already known
in social and journalistic circles since the mid-1960s, waited
one more afternoon for Carmen Posadas to finish her classes
so that he could enjoy the afternoon in Madrid with her.
But the companions of the daughter of the Uruguayan ambassador in Madrid could rest easy, between Fernando Falcó, who had already turned 35, and Carmen Posadas
there was only a friendly relationship.
She with whom he was dating at that time was with another Fernando, the son of Zita Polo and Ramón Serrano Suñer and, therefore, Franco's nephew.
"The two Fernandos" and "the two playboys",
as they were known then.
Carlos Falcó and Esther Doña at a Vanity Fair party in 2019GTRES
The Marquis de Cubas, accompanied
at some of those dinners by Ira de Furstenberg,
had earned his fame as a womanizer.
His nickname of "playboy marquis" had already gone around the world from the moment he became the companion of Princess Soraya, a former Empress of Iran whom the Shah had just repudiated for allegedly being sterile.
Exiled in Europe,
Soraya frequently visited Madrid,
she went out to dinner with
Fernando Falcó and the expectations of a wedding between them
, which would never take place, animated the newsrooms of the media of the time.
Those who were not so delighted with so much media attention were his parents, the Dukes of Montellano.
Manuel Falcó y Escandón and Hilda Fernández de Córdoba, daughter of the Dukes of Arión, enjoyed in their own right the greatness of Spain
, the highest noble distinction, and "appear on paper",
as they referred to the fact of seeing published his son's name in the newspapers
was not typical of his class.
Esther Koplowitz with Fernando FalcóGTRES
At that time, the life of his brother Carlos, two years older than him and with the title of Marquis of Griñón,
was much more calm and discreet
.
It is true that they did not miss any of the parties organized by the high society of the 60s. "For the parties to
be of category, none of them could be missing",
recalls one of her friends from the time who, of course, neither
he missed none of these parties in private residences
, all dressed in black tie and with live music performed by the orchestras of the moment.
Carlos Falcó had other interests, he had
trained as an agricultural engineer in Leuven
(Belgium) and his experiences abroad had already made him a
'rare bird' in his social environment.
Young, handsome,
with a noble title and a palace in Castellana.
The attractiveness of the two brothers was undeniable.
Their exquisite education, their manners and their social relationships and contacts made them
unique characters in the social chronicle
until the moment of his death in 2020, just seven months apart.
And his life allows us to take a journey through a novel-
Los Falcó
(The Sphere of Books)
through a Spain that no longer exists.
Carlos Falcó at the airportGTRES
Fernando Falcó was one of the children chosen among the great families to
be Juan Carlos's desk companion
when the then prince had barely turned 10 years old.
They knew each other from before, from the summers in Estoril, when their parents, the Dukes of Montellano,
visited Don Juan in his Portuguese exile,
but the time they shared at the Las Jarillas boarding school, on the Colmenar road (Madrid), would strengthen this relationship.
As children they were, in addition to playing soccer
they also got to the hands and even fists
.
Fernando Montellano, who was how he was known then, did not like it at all, for example, that his classmates made fun of him by calling him
Ben Barek for the passion he felt for this Moroccan player
signed by Atlético de Madrid.
"The black pearl", is how he was known because of the color of his skin, and he was the son of great Spain
with a palace a few meters from the Santiago Bernabéu...
The noble title as a substitute for the
paternal surname was something very typical of the time and was used by all aristocrats.
In fact, Carlos and Fernando Falcó did not begin to be
known by their surnames until the mid-1970s
, in the midst of the Democratic Transition.
Also years in which the Marquis of Griñón shows his innovative entrepreneurial spirit that
will accompany him until the last moments of his life.
He had met his first wife, Jeannine Girod, at a party in the early 1960s,
a few years after returning to Spain
after finishing his studies in Belgium.
The daughter of a jeweler of Swiss origin,
Jeannine did not respond to the prototype of the Spanish woman either.
of those years.
With her, the Marquis of Griñón had
his two eldest children -Manuel and Xandra-
but after a few years of marriage they requested the marriage annulment -in the Spain of the 70s the divorce was not yet approved-, and
Carlos Falcó stayed with the custody of minors.
Marta Chávarri with Fernando Falcó Getty
"To the Senate for agriculture, to the Senate for agriculture...!" the children repeated in 1977. Their father, the Marquis of Griñón, was
running for the first democratic elections after the dictatorship
and running for the upper house for the province of Caceres.
He did not get the seat but he was not afraid to achieve his next goals,
cultivate his land, fight against Tabacalera's monopoly
on tobacco production in Spain and plant and water his vineyards -something prohibited in our country-
with the methods he had learned in California.
The proclamation of Don Juan Carlos as King also meant a
change in the relationship with his childhood friend
.
The new monarch made it very clear from the start that he would do without the court.
Not only because of the abuses that had been committed in the times of Alfonso XIII but because of everything that the aristocracy
had meant as a social class during the dictatorship.
Franco had not only rehabilitated the noble titles that had been abolished
during the Second Republic, he also favored the
economic development of the aristocracy and even assumed the right to grant noble titles.
And so, in the Spain that was born
with the Transition, the title of the Montellano
It ceased to have social relevance and the Marquis of Griñón and the Marquis of Cubas
became simply Carlos and Fernando Falcó.
Isabel Preysler with Carlos Falcó Getty
The 80's was also
the decade of that decaffeinated socialism called "beautiful people"
that managed to bring together the politicians and businessmen of the time with the most striking women of the moment
and strange bedfellows emerged.
The Duchess of Montellano endured with her legendary "know how to be" the wedding of her son, the Marquis of Griñón, with Isabel Preysler, divorced and mother of three children with Julio Iglesias.
And neither did she say anything in public when her other son, the Marquis of Cubas, was publicly humiliated by his then-wife Marta Chávarri.
Yes, yes...,
Isabel Preysler-that she left him for
Miguel Boyer
and with whom Carlos Falcó had her daughter Tamara- and Marta Chávarri
were sisters-in-law for a year and a half
, about.
Fernando Falcó divorced his wife when
his infidelity with Alberto Cortina was made public
in the loudest way possible, with the publication of photos included.
Cortina was then married to Alicia Koplowitz,
owner, together with his sister Esther
, of one of the main construction companies of the 1980s, Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC).
The scandal occupied pages and
pages of both the pink press and the salmon or economic press.
Despite so much public humiliation,
the brothers never spoke ill of their ex-wives
and would remake their sentimental life again.
Griñón with Fátima de la Cierva, mother of Duarte and Aldara, his youngest children, and Cubas with Esther Koplowitz, whom he would also end up divorcing.
As soon as he met Esther Doña
, a model from Malaga some forty years younger than him, the Marquis of Griñón did not hesitate to formalize his breakup
with his third wife in order to walk down the aisle with his fourth
.
For her, Griñón confronted her family -neither her brother Fernando nor any of her five children attended her wedding- and together she lived her last years
until he died of covid in March 2020, in full confinement.
"Oh, sir, sir...,
since you've taken away my strength, take away my desire too"
, some of his youthful friends commented with amusement.
They had no complex in admitting it,
the two brothers liked to live well
, they did not skimp on means and women were their great weakness.
Nor has one of them spoken ill of either of them.
They
were the last aristocrats, the last gentlemen.
The `goyas?
of the Falcó family Archive
The unusual story of Goya's 'El columpio'
Carlos and Fernando Falcó grew up among 'goyas'.
The history of the paintings by the Aragonese master that his family had hung in the palace of the Montellano in la Castellana also allows us
to take a tour of the future of this country in the last century
.
From the aristocracy of blood to that of money.
In the mid-1960s, in the midst of economic development and with the price per square meter skyrocketing in the center of Madrid,
the Duke and Duchess of Montellano sold the palace located at number 33 of the Castellana
and with it most of the works of art that I treasured
Among them, "The swing" and "The fall of the donkey",
two of the paintings that the Duchess of Osuna commissioned
Goya in 1783 to decorate her El Capricho palace, on the outskirts of Madrid.
It is one of the main exclusives of the novel that allows structuring the story.
Carlos and Fernando's grandparents bought them at a historic auction in 1886, when the Osunas
were forced to sell and auction all their belongings.
At the end of the 1960s, the
two paintings were acquired by Alberto Alcocer
and his then wife Esther Koplowitz and they are two of the main works of art that were stolen from the businesswoman in 2001, in one of the most surreal and even Hollywood people who remember.
https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.amazon.es/Los-Falc**A-Fernando-**Altimos-arist**Acratas/dp/8413843863/__;w7PDusOz!!GgY6cLU_GgY!WjHntIyCqbYsE6z2uodS1vByZlx -Z54ZFfGZ5NNRrrAB_CItdr5YyAkWvvt7n6zor5LXeaYERbPY6b67zQydLTgZgs4qzv6A9NH1$
Conforms to The Trust Project criteria
Know more