Duchess of Alba passes away

CAYETANA Fitz-James Stuart, 18^th Duchess of Alba has died in her sleep at her home, the Dueñas Palace in Sevilla.

She was admitted to hospital in the city on Sunday after suffering a stomach upset and lung infection for some time, experiencing a relapse when she appeared to have been recovering well.

On Monday, possibly suspecting she may not pull through, the Duchess, 88, asked to be taken home to the Dueñas Palace and treated there.

The same staff attended to her round the clock, and on Tuesday it was reported that she was on a life support machine and had been unconscious since the night before.

Born at Liria Palace (Madrid) on March 28, 1926, her full name is María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva and she is the only child of the 17^th Duke of the House of Alba and goddaughter of Queen Consort Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg, King Alfonso XIII’s wife.

With over 40 noble titles, the Duchess holds the world record – she is the Countess-Duchess of Olivares, holds seven Duchess titles, 19 Marquise titles, is Countess 22 times, Viscountess of La Calzada, Lady of Moguer, has four The Most Excellent titles, is a Dame six times over, and has eight honorary appointments including Constable of Aragón, Honorary President of the Red Cross in Spain, Member of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, Marshal of Castilla and Honorary President of the Opera Philharmonic Orchestra.

Among all this, she is also Duchess of Berwick, a Peerage title created in 1687 in England for James FitzJames, illegitimate son of King James II and Arabella Churchill.

This makes the Duchess of Alba the oldest surviving descendent of King James II of England, who was King James VII of Scotland and the last-reigning monarch north of the Hadrian’s Wall, as reported by thinkSPAIN on February 21 this year (see http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/23964/cayetana-queen-of-scots-spains-duchess-of-alba-would-be-direct-heiress-to-throne-of-an-independent-scotland).

Had the region voted ‘yes’ to independence and decided on a monarchy rather than becoming a republic, the Duchess of Alba would have been Queen Cayetana of Scotland and said at the time she would very much like to hold the role.

Cayetana – known as ‘Caye’ to friends and family, a dramatically-abbreviated name considering the fact that her full titles would run into paragraphs – was said to be worth over three billion euros.

Nearly all of this was tied up in fixed assets – three palaces, numerous estates and properties, and a multitude of heritage and works of art including a 19^th-century original Goya featuring an earlier Duchess of Alba.

Other antiques and art include originals by Renoir, a first-edition copy of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha, and letters written by Christopher Columbus.

When she met her most recent husband, Alfonso Díez, 64, her children feared he was a gold-digger marrying a woman 24 years his senior in the hope of inheriting her fortune.

Although Alfonso stressed it really was true love, the Duchess’ children remained sceptical.

As a result, before their wedding in 2011, Cayetana ceded her entire wealth to her children so they could feel safe in the knowledge that her new husband would not take their inheritance from them.

Aside from her numerous noble genes, Cayetana enjoyed travelling and flamenco music and dance, was great friends with Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy and even Tom Cruise, and was a constant feature in glossy magazines focusing on lightweight celebrity gossip.

She has lived abroad, including in Paris for several years between the dawn of the second Republic in Spain and the start of the Spanish Civil War, when she moved to London and went to school in Kensington.

Here, Cayetana would play board games and hang out with the future Queen Elizabeth II of England, who is the same age as the Duchess, become mates with one of Tolstoy’s grandsons, and spend time with Winston Churchill, son of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough which made him a distant family relation.

Cayetana married Luis Martínez de Irujo y Artácoz in 1947, became Duchess at age 27, but was widowed in 1972 when her husband was just 53.

But during their 25-year union, they had six children, with the long surname of Fitz-James Stuart y Martínez de Irujo – Alfonso, Jacobo, Carlos, Fernando, Cayetano – well-known as an internationally-successful showjumper – and one daughter, Eugenia (pictured with the Duchess in the 1970s).

The Duchess remarried in 1978, this time to Jesús Aguirre y Ortiz de Zárate, a doctor of theology and former Jesuit priest who was also born out of wedlock, a factor which caused great scandal in 1970s’ Spain.

Cayetana was once again widowed in 2001, but seven years later it was rumoured she was going to marry Alfonso Díez Carabantes, a civil servant with his own PR business.

She published her memoirs, Yo, Cayetana (‘Me, Cayetana’) in July 2011, and a sequel, Lo que la vida me ha enseñado (‘What life has taught me’) in April 2013.

The Duchess of Alba will be remembered for her noble blood and long list of titles, and her celebrity connections, but also as a feisty character who flew in the face of convention, stuck to her guns, loved and lived life to the full.