Gonzalo de Borbon y Battenberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gonzalo de Borbón y Battenberg, portrait by Philip Alexius de László , 1927

Don Gonzalo de Borbón y Battenberg , full name Gonzalo Manuel Maria Bernardo Narciso Alfonso Mauricio de Borbón y Battenberg (born October 24, 1914 in Madrid , †  August 13, 1934 in Pörtschach am Wörther See ) was the infant of Spain and uncle of the later King of Spain Juan Carlos I , who was born four years after Gonzalo's death.

Life

Gonzalo was the fifth son of seven children of King Alfonso XIII of Spain . (1886–1941) and his wife Princess Victoria Eugénie von Battenberg (1887–1969), daughter of Prince Heinrich Moritz von Battenberg and Princess Beatrice of Great Britain and Ireland . His paternal grandparents were King Alfonso XII. and his second wife, Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria . Gonzalo and his older brother Alfonso Pius (1907-1938) suffered from hemophilia because her mother, a granddaughter of British Queen Victoria , winner ( Konduktorin was) the defective gene.

On April 14, 1931, the republic was proclaimed in Madrid and his father, King Alfonso XIII, went into exile on the same day without formal abdication . The royal family went first to Paris and shortly afterwards to Fontainebleau . His parents' marriage was considered unhappy. His father then had affairs with other women and several illegitimate children. From 1933 they lived separately and Alfons moved to Rome with his sisters, Beatrice Isabel and Maria Christina . After graduating from high school, Gonzalo studied mechanical engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven in 1933 instead of the Complutense University of Madrid .

In August 1934, Infant Gonzalo spent the summer vacation with his family in Count Ladislaus Hoyos' villa in Pörtschach am Wörther See. On the evening of August 11th, he and his sister Beatrice Isabel were driving from Klagenfurt to Pörtschach. In the vicinity of Krumpendorf am Wörthersee , his sister, who was at the wheel, had to avoid a cyclist and drove her car into a wall. Neither she nor Gonzalo appeared injured and later came back to the villa. A few hours later, doctors diagnosed Gonzalo with severe abdominal bleeding. An operation could not be performed due to his weak heart. Two days later, the 19-year-old Infant Gonzalo died of internal injuries and was then buried in the Pörtschach cemetery. In 1985 his body was reburied at Real Sitio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial and has been resting in Chapel 2 of the Pantheon of the Infants ever since .

Titles and awards

literature

  • Arnold McNaughton: The Book of Kings: A Royal Genealogy , London (1973)
  • Alison Weir: Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy , London (1999)