Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart

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Statue of the Duchess of Alba (1926-2014)
Coat of arms of the Duchess of Alba
North-east facade of the neoclassical Liria Palace, the city palace and main residence of the Duchess of Alba in Madrid
Gate to the Palacio de las Dueñas in Seville

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart ( María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva Falcó y Gurtubay , born March  28, 1926 in Madrid ; † 20. November 2014 in Seville ), often called Cayetana de Alba , presided over one of the most important and oldest aristocratic dynasties in Spain. She was a large landowner and was considered the richest woman in Spain.

title

Cayetana was the 18th Duchess of Alba from the House of Álvarez de Toledo and the third woman in the history of this noble house to be called Duchess because of her birth and not because of marriage. The headquarters of the Dukes of Alba is Alba de Tormes in Castile-León . According to the Guinness Book of Records , she was the person with the most noble titles in the world. Accordingly, she was eight times Duchess (including the 11th Duchess of Berwick ), fifteen times Marquise , twenty-one times Countess and nineteen times Spanish grandee .

In addition to the Dukes of Alba and Berwick in 2009, she also bore the following hereditary dignities:

  • Duquesa
    • de Liria y Jerica
    • de Arjona
    • de Hijar
  • Condesa-Duquesa de Olivares
  • Marquesa
de El Carpio de Coria de Eliche
de la Mota de San Leonardo de Sarria
de Villanuevo del Rio de Tarazona de Villanuevo del Fresno
de Barcarrota de la Algaba de Osera
de Moya de Almenara de Valdunquillo
de Mirallo de Orani de Castaneda
  • Condesa de Lemos
de Lerin de Monterrey de Osorno
de Miranda del Castenar de Palma del Rio de Aranda
de Andrade de Ayala de Fuentes de Valdepero
de Gelves de Villalba de San Esteban de Gormaz
de Fuentiduena de Casarrubios del Monte de Galve
de Santa Cruz de la Sierra de Ribadeo de Guimera
  • Viscondesa de la Calzada.
  • She was also Condestable de Navarra

She had already transferred other titles to her to her children during her lifetime.

Life

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart was born in the Liria Palace in Madrid and was the only child of Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Falcó (1878–1953), the 17th Duke of Alba, and his wife Maria del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay ( 1900–1934), the 15th Princess of Aliaga and the 9th Marquise of San Vicente del Barco. The surname Fitz-James Stuart, which is unusual in Spain, goes directly back to the English King James II , who with his mistress Arabella Churchill had an illegitimate son, James Fitzjames, 1st Duke of Berwick-upon-Tweed .

From the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War until 1945, Cayetana de Alba lived with her parents in London, where her father was ambassador for the Franco regime . After returning to Spain, she married Luis Martínez de Irujo, son of the Duke of Sotomayor, on October 12, 1947; The New York Times called the wedding in Seville Cathedral one of the most expensive weddings in the world. Cayetana de Alba had six children with him:

  • Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo, Duke of Huéscar (* 1948)
  • Alfonso Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart, Duke of Hijar (* 1950)
  • Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo, Count of Siruela (* 1954)
  • Fernando Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart, Marquis of San Vicente del Barco (* 1959)
  • Cayetano Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart , Duke of Arjona (* 1963)
  • Eugenia Martínez de Irujo y Fitz-James Stuart, Duchess of Montoro (* 1968)
Painting by Francisco de Goya: The Duchess of Alba (1795) , Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo , 13th Duchess of Alba, Liria Palace

Despite the fascist dictatorship of Franco , Cayetana de Alba was able to exhibit paintings by Pablo Picasso in Spain - the artist was a communist, outspoken opponent of Franco and banned in Spain. In her youth, Cayetana de Alba was a striking beauty and was asked by Picasso to become his muse , which she flatly refused: “I actually never met Picasso. The news came to me through the bullfighter Dominguín . ”One of her ancestors, Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo (1762–1802), the 13th Duchess of Alba, is known in art history as the painter Francisco Goya immortalized them several times in portraits and fell in love with them. Her reputation for being beautiful as well as extravagant and capricious has survived, and the writer Ramon de la Serna called her Spain's first modern woman. Picasso wanted to paint Cayetana de Alba according to Goya's example, dressed and naked Maja .

With the death of her father Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Falcó in 1953, Cayetana de Alba became the head of the house of Alba. Her first husband died in 1972.

On May 14, 1975, she founded the Fundación Casa de Alba - aware of the important patrimony that the House of Alba possesses - and assumed its chairmanship.

In 1978 she married Jesús Aguirre Ortiz de Zárate (1934-2001), one of the most prominent Spanish intellectuals and former Franco opponent. Aguirre had studied philosophy at the Jesuit-led seminary of Comillas with Santander before he went to Munich in 1956, where he studied theology, did his doctorate and was ordained a priest in 1961. In this capacity, after his return to Spain in 1962, he worked as a chaplain at the Church of the University of Madrid. He had already made contact with the founding members of the ´Frente de Liberación Popular´, a prominent anti-French movement. In 1969 he resigned his priesthood and became literary director of the Taurus publishing house. With the publication of writings that were banned in Franco's Spain, such as books by the leading figures of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno, he contributed to the intellectual climate that made the transition from Franquism to democracy possible. In 1977 he was appointed Director General for Music in the Ministry of Culture, in 1983 he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Real Académie de Bellas Artes) and in 1985 he was elected to the Royal Spanish Academy of Language (Real Académia Española). Aguirre died on May 11, 2001 at the age of 66 and was buried in the Pantheon of the House of Alba in Loeches (Madrid).

On October 5, 2011, Cayetana de Alba married for the third time at the age of 85 with Alfonso Díez Carabantes (* 1950), an administrative officer and owner of a PR company from Madrid, who was 25 years younger than her eldest son is. Her six children and heirs opposed this wedding for three years. In 2008, King Juan Carlos, whose consent Cayetana de Alba had to obtain according to the age-old protocol of the House of Alba, spoke out against the marriage. The headstrong and eccentric aristocrat, however, got her way. Her groom promised in writing that she would waive all inheritance claims, and she divided her inheritance, notarized, ahead of time, so that her children gave up the resistance. A few days before the wedding, she and her future husband visited King Juan Carlos in Madrid, who has now given his consent to the wedding. The wedding ceremony took place in the chapel of the Duchess Dueñas Palace in Seville.

possession

Cayetana de Alba belonged to latifundiums , palaces, castles and chateaux. The value of her collection of exquisite art treasures, which can largely be seen in the Liria Palace , such as masterpieces by Fra Angelico , Goya , Velázquez , Titian , Murillo , Ingres , Renoir , Rubens , Ribera , Zurbarán and Zuloaga, cannot be quantified. This also applies to the library with manuscripts , incunabula and first editions, including the first edition of Miguel de Cervantes ' Don Quixote from 1605, a collection of handwritten letters from Christopher Columbus , Columbus' first map of America and the famous Alba Bible , a magnificently illustrated and illuminated illuminated manuscript translated directly from Hebrew into Castilian , completed in 1430.

Her fortune was estimated at up to 3.6 billion euros, but an exact value of all her possessions could not be proven.

Monasterio de la Inmaculada Concepción in Loeches - in 1909 her father had a monumental burial chapel built in the church of the monastery for the family

Web links

Commons : Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Javier Cáceres: 600 million for a husband. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 10, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b Guillermo Álvarez-Duque: Cayetana de Alba, la mujer más Grande de España, cumple 85 años. In: diariofemenino.com. March 11, 2011, accessed October 12, 2011 .
  3. ↑ So z. B. in the editions of 1984 (p. 290) and 1985 (p. 282). The entry is missing in later editions.
  4. ^ A b Elenco de Grandezas y Titulos Nobiliarios Espanoles, edition 2009, Edditiones de la revista HIDALGUIA, Madrid, article Alba de Tormes, pages 41 and 42
  5. ↑ a b Lucy Crossley: "I'm going to bury you all!" Extraordinary life of the irrepressible Duchess of Alba, 87, her three husbands ... and why she turned down the chance to be Picasso's muse. May 6, 2013, accessed March 31, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Spain's wedding of the year. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
  7. ^ Nosotros, go on Alba. Retrieved October 12, 2011 .
  8. ↑ The Duchess of Alba remarries. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Narcissism - A mummy refuses to testify. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
  10. ↑ Rich love. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Manuel Vicent: "Aguirre, el magnífico", ALFAGUARA-Verlag, 2011. pp. 23, 26, 62, 84, 104.
  12. ↑ Spanish duchess gives away fortune in order to marry civil servant. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Duchess of Alba It is the heart. Retrieved March 31, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Fitz-James Stuart, Cayetana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, María del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish aristocrat
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid
DATE OF DEATH 20th November 2014
Place of death Madrid