The day when Don Juan de Borbón decided that his cousin María de las Mercedes de Orleans would be his wife, they had not seen each other for several years. Don Juan had just inherited the dynastic rights, after the renunciation of his two older brothers, Alfonso and Jaime, the first for an unsuitable marriage with a commoner and the second because he was deaf from birth.
The royal family was in exile, in Rome, after the proclamation of the II Republic, and that January 14, 1935, all the cousins gathered for the wedding of Don Juan’s sister, Infanta Beatriz, with the Italian aristocrat Alessandro Torlonia, Prince di Civitella Cesi.
Juan de Borbón was born on June 20, 1913, at the Royal Palace of La Granja, in Segovia. He was the fifth son of Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg and the third son among the male offspring, and he never imagined he would be his father’s successor. Those who knew him described him as affable, with a close, approachable demeanor, but with a strict sense of duty, and very fond of water sports, especially sailing. Don Juan and Alfonso XIII had already considered the Borbón-Dos Sicilias and Orleans sisters for a possible marriage.
Don Juan de Borbón preferred his sister
In those years it was essential for a heir to the throne to marry within royalty. Don Juan was indeed heir, though at that moment he was in exile. It seems that the candidate he liked most was María Esperanza, but, at that wedding, he fixed his attention on María de las Mercedes. Tall, blonde, with large blue eyes, she possessed a sweet yet tenacious temper that captivated him. They danced, conversed and strolled, and Don Juan asked María—as she was known in the family—for permission to write to her.
María Esperanza, María de las Mercedes, and María Dolores de Borbón-Dos Sicilias y Orleans were the daughters of the second marriage of Infante Don Carlos de Borbón-Dos Sicilias, who remarried with Princess Luisa of Orleans, daughter of the claimant to the French throne, after the death of his first wife, María de las Mercedes de Borbón, elder sister of Alfonso XIII and Princess of Asturias, who died in the delivery of her daughter Isabel Alfonsa, at merely 24 years old.
Her older brothers were Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, and Fernando, who died at two years old. In 1908, a year after his second marriage, King Alfonso XIII decreed that all descendants be considered Infantes of Spain and Princes of the House of Bourbon with the style of Royal Highnesses.
María de las Mercedes was the third of the four siblings born from this union: the eldest, Carlos, died a few weeks after enlisting in Franco’s army; the second, María de los Dolores, married Polish prince Czartoryski, and María de la Esperanza, the youngest, joined with Prince Pedro Gastón of Orleans-Braganza.
María de las Mercedes’ Tiara-Free Wedding
The wedding between Don Juan and Doña María de las Mercedes took place only eight months after that decisive encounter. The couple began an abundant correspondence, but they hardly saw each other in the preceding months. They only met during a trip to Paris. The bride’s father, Infante Don Carlos, insisted that Don Juan demonstrate the solidity of his feelings “as a man” and the security of that relationship “as heir to the throne.”
Juan de Borbón and María de las Mercedes, on their wedding day.
María de las Mercedes had been born in Madrid, in 1910, at the Palacio de Villamejor, later the seat of government, but she spent much of her childhood and youth in Seville, when her father was assigned in 1921 to the Andalusian capital as captain general of the IV Military Region. They spent time between the San Telmo Palace and the Villamanrique de la Condesa, which belonged to her mother’s family. She always had a great love for Andalusia.
The union took place on October 12, 1935, the Day of the Hispanidad, in the Basilica of Santa María de los Ángeles y los Mártires, in Rome, before four hundred guests. The bride wore a lamé dress in silver by the “Worth” Maison. The design was medieval in style, with wide sleeves, a chimney neck, and a bias-cut bodice that ended at a fitted waist.
No tiara, only simple orange blossom flowers in the form of a diadem holding the gauze veil, brought from Spain, like the white carnations that adorned the church. For a bouquet, there were gladioli, which one of the guests bought at the last moment, when her sister Esperanza realized that no one had taken care of the flowers.
The pass-down jewelry
The bride’s only jewels: that Don Juan had made for her with a ruby. That same day, Alfonso XIII presented his daughter-in-law with the jewelry of Infanta Isabel “la Chata” and those that his mother, Queen María Cristina, had indicated should “pass” from queen of Spain to queen of Spain. Queen Victoria Eugenia would hand to her son the pieces that were in her power in her will. She did not attend so as not to coincide with Alfonso XIII.
After the ceremony, the newlyweds went to the Vatican to receive the blessing of Pope Pius XII. The reception was held at the Grand Hotel in Rome. On their honeymoon, the newlyweds circled the world. Upon returning, they settled in Cannes. Nine months later, their first daughter, Infanta Pilar, was born. The rest—Juan Carlos, Margarita, and Alfonso—were born in Rome. After the death of Alfonso XIII, the family settled in Lausanne, Switzerland, alongside Queen Victoria Eugenia.
The marriage had complicitity and proved to be a well-matched pair. María de las Mercedes was a woman of simple and sober tastes, not fond of jewelry or haute couture, who always played a decisive role in keeping her family from breaking apart. She had to accept the separation from her first child, the heir Prince Juan Carlos, when the family settled in Estoril and the boy, barely eight years old, remained at the Freiburg boarding school.
María de las Mercedes de Borbón y Orleans.
From those early years, she would also remember the difficult relationship she had with her mother-in-law, Queen Victoria Eugenia, raised in an atmosphere of restraint and radical discipline, completely opposite to the one she had lived. Infidelities of her husband, a pleasant man, but accustomed to amorous affairs, were also not lacking.
There was talk of a Hollywood actress, of several ladies of the Portuguese upper bourgeoisie, and of a great love for a Greek woman. Nati Mistral, the Spanish actress and singer, was also mentioned, though she always denied it. Doña María endured, as was endured then, whether in royalty or among ordinary women.
A hard blow
However, life had reserved for her the worst suffering a mother can endure: her younger son Alfonso died at barely fourteen when his brother Juan Carlos fired by mistake a pistol that belonged to Don Juan, with which the brothers used to play. It was Holy Thursday. Doña María slid into a deep depression that led her to abuse alcohol.
She was admitted to several clinics in Switzerland and Germany, but she never fully recovered. For that reason, she resolved, with all her determination, to intercede between father and son when Don Juan Carlos settled in Spain to study and later was named successor to Franco “as king” and Don Juan felt betrayed.
Don Juan de Borbón, in an archival photograph.
The years passed and father and son forged peace. Don Juan renounced the dynastic rights in favor of his son, in May 1977. Doña María died on January 2, 2000 at the Mareta Palace, a gift from King Hussein to King Juan Carlos, which the royal family never used again and which today is reserved for the vacations of the Prime Ministers. She died surrounded by her entire family, her grandchildren and nephews. She was buried in the kings’ section of the pantheon at the Monastery of El Escorial, next to the remains of her husband, the Count of Barcelona, who had died on April 1, 1993.
