Alfonso, Prince of Asturias

Alfonso
Prince of Asturias; Count of Covadonga
Alfonso in military uniform at the age 8.
Count of Covadonga
Term	21 June 1933 – 6 September 1938
Spouse	Edelmira Sampedro y Robato (m.1933, div.1937) Marta Esther Rocafort-Altuzarra (m.1937, div.1938)
Full name
Alfonso Pío Cristino Eduardo Francisco Guillermo Carlos Enrique Eugenio Fernando Antonio Venancio
House	House of Bourbon
Father	Alfonso XIII of Spain
Mother	Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg
Born	10 May 1907 Madrid, Spain
Died	6 September 1938(1938-09-06) (aged 31) Miami, Florida, USA
Religion	Roman Catholicism

Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (Alfonso Pío Cristino Eduardo Francisco Guillermo Carlos Enrique Eugenio Fernando Antonio Venancio Borbón y Battenberg (Madrid, 10 May 1907 – Miami, Miami-Dade County, Florida, 6 September 1938), was an Infante of Spain and the heir-apparent of the throne of Spain from 1907 to 1931.

Biography

Early life

Alfonso was the eldest child of the then-reigning king Alfonso XIII of Spain and his wife Victoria Eugenie. He inherited the genetic disorder haemophilia from his maternal line. He was a matrilineal great-grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. He and his youngest brother Gonzalo were kept in specially-tailored jackets to prevent injury from accidents.

He was the 1,120th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain in 1907.

His father the King faced increasing political problems that led Spain to become a Republic in 1931 when the monarch was deposed. The family moved into exile.

Renunciation and first marriage

There had been plans of young Alfonso's deposition from succession, but ultimately he himself renounced his rights to the then-defunct throne to marry a commoner, Edelmira Ignacia Adriana Sampedro-Robato, in Ouchy on 21 June 1933, after which Alfonso took the courtesy title Count of Covadonga. (This was required by the regulations for the succession set by the Pragmatic Sanction of Charles III.) The couple divorced 8 May 1937, with Edelmira keeping the title Countess of Covadonga.

Second marriage

He married Marta Esther Rocafort-Altuzarra in Havana on 3 July 1937. They divorced on 8 January 1938. He had no issue by either of his wives. Alfonso had a child born out of wedlock in 1932, Alphonse de Bourbon with María Mercedes Flores de Apodaca, of Spanish heritage.

Death

A car accident led to his early death in 1938, at the age of 31. He crashed into a telephone booth and appeared to have minor injuries but his haemophilia led to fatal internal bleeding. He was initially entombed at Woodlawn Park Cemetery and Mausoleum (now Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Park North Cemetery and Mausoleum) in Miami but in 1985 he was re-entombed in the Pantheon of the Princes in El Escorial. His first wife, who had been allowed to retain the title Countess of Covadonga, was present when he was re-entombed.

Succession

The last person to be titled Prince of Asturias before Alfonso's birth was his aunt Infanta Mercedes, who died three years before his birth; in practice, Alfonso's predecessor as first heir to Spain was his first cousin, Mercedes's son, the Infante Alfonso of the Two Sicilies.

His successor technically was his next brother, Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia, who did not receive the Asturias title. Jaime's own renunciation took place soon after. In practice (but not titularly) the next heir-apparent of claims to Spanish throne was Alfonso's younger brother Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona. Generalissimo Francisco Franco gave Juan's son Infante Juan Carlos the official title 'Prince of Spain' when he chose the Infante as heir-apparent to the vacant throne (monarchy was restored in 1975); therefore the next member of the Spanish royal family to be officially invested with the title Principe de Asturias was Juan Carlos I's son Infante Felipe, Alfonso's grandnephew, in 1977.

Ancestry

Sources

• Time, 12 June 1933
• El Nuevo Herald, 23 May 2004
• El Mundo, 2 July 1994

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alfonso, Prince of Asturias (1907–1938)

• Royal House of Spain

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