The Duchess of Alba: Flamboyant aristocrat, the world’s most ennobled person, who scandalised Spain with her marriages to younger men

Spain's Duchess of Alba Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva (R) dances flamenco beside her husband Alfonso Diez outside Las Duenas Palace after their wedding in Seville in this October 5, 2011 file photo.

Towards the end of her life, she cut an eccentric figure with bright white hair and waxy skin. But when María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, the 18th Duchess of Alba, was in her prime, she was considered one of the greatest beauties of her age: Picasso wanted to paint her, Jackie Kennedy visited her Seville palace and she was friends with Grace Kelly.

Descended from James II of Scotland and his mistress Arabella Churchill, the duchess was one of the most senior aristocrats in Spain and thought to have been one of the most titled aristocrats in the world. Her titles gave her several privileges, such as riding a horse into Seville Cathedral and not having to kneel before the Pope.

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Jacqueline Kennedy and her hostess the Duchess of Alba

The then Duchess of Montoro wearing a ballgown and tiara circa 1947

The duchess’s first marriage was to Luis Martínez de Irujo in 1947 in what newspapers dubbed ‘the most expensive wedding in the world’. From this marriage, she had six children, with her eldest son, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, assuming the title of 19th Duke of Alba when she died. Later, in the 1950s, Picasso wanted to paint her because Goya had painted one of her ancestors. However, the duchess decided against it as she thought that being painted by the communist Picasso in the fascist political climate of Spain would have caused too much of a scandal. That didn’t stop her, however, from bringing Picasso paintings to a private showroom in Seville which led to her being labelled as ‘left-wing’.

With the then Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall

After her first husband died in 1972, she married former Jesuit priest Jesús Aguirre. When he died in 2001, she expressed a wish to marry Alfonso Díez Carabantes, a civil servant who was 24 years her junior, which worried her family. However, in 2008, the House of Alba released a statement which said that their relationship ‘was based on a long friendship and there are no plans to marry’. Despite this, the two married in 2011.