When he went to see the premiere of ‘The Lady of the Camellias’ in 1916, Alfonso XIII had already been married to Queen Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg for a decade. The protagonist was Carmen Ruiz Moragas, an actress who had taken her first professional steps in the company of María Guerrero. There she soon stood out for her talent and intelligence, until she became the main figure of the Spanish Theater, a position she held for her when the King took a fancy to her at that performance.
At the end, Alfonso XIII asked his friend, the Marquis of Viana, a regular companion at parties and a cover-up for his adventures, to bring the actress to the anteroom to greet her and, incidentally, woo her. Shortly after, Carmen became what they say was the true love of her life. The secret relationship they began at that time lasted for more than a decade and they had two children: Maria Teresa and Leandro. He gave none of them his surname, but he took care of them secretly, until his death, even when he was in exile once the Second Republic was proclaimed.
That of Carmen Ruiz Moragas was the other family of the King of Spain, a clandestine family unknown to most Spaniards throughout the 1920s. Only a circle very close to the monarch was aware of that relationship, but everything changed in July in 1931, when the magazine ‘Crónica’ decided to interview the lover in the same mansion where she lived with her bastard children and where she had seen the monarch so many times.
In the new podcast of the History section we rescue the confessions he made that day ‘The Bourbon‘ –as the Spaniards later knew her– and the ins and outs of that furtive romance, with the help of Lucas Montojo, author of ‘The other family of the King’ (Renaissance, 2022).
credits
Script and production: Israel Viana.
edition: Andrea Carrasco.
voiceover: Laura Odene, Andrea Carrasco, Jesús Calero, Pablo Ortega and Israel Viana.
collaboration: Lucas Montojo.
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