Carlos of Bourbon Sicily

Carlos Prince of Bourbon-Sicily , full name: Don Carlos Maria Alfonso Marcel de Borbón y Borbón, Infante of Spain, Prince of the Two Sicilies and Duke of Calabria , (born  January 16, 1938 in Lausanne ; †  October 5, 2015 ) was since 1964 (controversial) head of the House of Bourbon-Sicily , a branch of the House of Bourbon .

Life

Don Carlos was the son of Prince Alfonso of Bourbon-Sicily , Duke of Calabria and Infanta of Spain (1901-1964), and his wife Princess Alicia Maria (1917-2017), daughter of Elias of Bourbon-Parma and Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria. He grew up in Switzerland and Spain with his two sisters Teresa (* 1937) and Inés Maria (* 1940) .

After the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War , Francisco Franco (1892–1975) met the monarchists in Spain , in 1945 he promised them a later reintroduction of the monarchy , and in 1947 he passed a law stating that a person to be determined by him royal blood should succeed him as head of state after his death. For this purpose, Don Carlos and his cousin, who later became King Juan Carlos I (* 1938), were prepared for the office at a separate school.

Carlos and his wife Anne d'Orléans (2007)

Don Carlos lived in Madrid with his family . He owned land near Toledo and Ciudad Real and was a shareholder in the Spanish companies Repsol YPF and Telefónica . He was also President of the Royal Council of the Order of Santiago , the Order of Alcántara and the Order of Calatrava and Montesa and Grand Master of the Order of St. George of Constantine ( Sacro Militare Ordine Costantiniano di San Giorgio , SMOC).

At the wedding of Juan Carlos I with Sophia of Greece in Athens , Don Carlos met his future wife, Anne Marguerite Brigitte Marie Princess of Orléans (born December 4, 1938), daughter of Henri d'Orléans, Comte de Paris and Isabelle d ' Orléans-Bragance . The wedding took place on May 12, 1965 in Dreux . They had five children:

• Christina (* 1966) ⚭ 1994 Pedro López-Quesada y Fernández Urrutia (* 1964)
• Maria (* 1967) ⚭ 1996 Simeon von Habsburg-Lothringen, Archduke of Austria (* 1958), grandson of the last Austrian Emperor Karl I.
• Pedro (* 1968) ⚭ 2001 Sofia Landaluce y Melgarejo (* 1973)
• Inés Maria (* 1971) ⚭ 2001 Michele Carrelli Palombi dei Marchesi Di Raiano (* 1965)
• Victoria (* 1976) ⚭ 2003 Markos Nomikos (* 1965), Greek ship owner

Carlos of Bourbon-Sicily found his final resting place in the Real Sitio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial , where his coffin has been in the pudridero of the Pantheon of the Infants since 2015 . It is a publicly inaccessible room in which the corpses can rot before they are finally placed in the pantheon of the Infants after about fifty years.

Dispute over the position as head of the House of Bourbon-Sicily

After the death of the last Sicilian king, Franz II. , In 1894, he was succeeded as head of the house and pretender to the throne by his younger half-brother Alfons Maria of Naples-Sicily and in 1934 his eldest son Ferdinand of Bourbon-Sicily (1869-1960), Duke of Calabria who died without male descendants. His next younger brother, Carlos Maria de Bourbon (1870–1949), had the sister of King Alfonso XIII in 1901 . married of Spain, Princess María de las Mercedes de Borbón (1880-1904), at the time heir to the throne of her still childless brother, which in this situation would have made him King of Spain through his wife .

Because of Charles III. In 1759, in a pragmatic sanction decreed separation of the Spanish from the Sicilian crown, Carlos Maria then renounced his claims to the Sicilian throne, acquired Spanish citizenship and, as "Don Carlos", assumed the title of Infante of Spain. After his brother-in-law King Alfonso XIII. However, had still fathered seven children and had also lost his throne through the proclamation of the Republic in 1931, the reason for Carlos Maria's Sicilian resignation no longer applies. His son Alfons of Bourbon-Sicily (1901–1964) therefore claimed the position of head of the house in 1960, after the death of his uncle Ferdinand, in competition with his uncle Ranieri, Duke of Castro (1883–1973), who was renounced from 1901 the right of succession was granted. After Alfons' death in 1964, his son, the Don Carlos treated here, claimed the position of head of the family. His claims were supported by the Spanish King Juan Carlos, who had been preferred to him (and his cousin Alfonso ) by Franco as heir to the Spanish throne; Nevertheless, in 1994 Juan Carlos also confirmed him the title of Spanish Infante. The position as head of the Sicilian Bourbons is therefore claimed today by two cousins: Pedro (* 1968), Duke of Calabria, the son of Carlos, who died in 2015, and Carlo (* 1963), Duke of Castro.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eduardo Verbo: Muere el infante Carlos de Borbón-Dos Sicilias, primo y amigo de Juan Carlos I. In: elmundo.es , El Mundo , October 5, 2015, accessed on October 5, 2015 (Spanish).