Beheaded as his French relatives. In this way Alfonso de Borbón Dampierre, Duke of Cadiz, Duke of Anjou, died on January 30th, 1989. But it was not in the scaffold, nor in Paris, nor during a revolution. The death reached him on a ski slope in the United States while practicing his favourite sport. On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of his death, Ediciones Altera offers the first biography of the eldest grandson of King Alfonso XIII, the son of the heir of the latter, written by a great journalist and historian, expert in the Bourbon family: José María Zavala.

For the Spaniards, the face and the name of Alfonso of Bourbon Dampierre were habitual for decades. First born of the eldest son of Alfonso XIII, cousin of King Juan Carlos I, Ambassador of Spain; married with a granddaughter of Franco… A man whose family name, that of the Kings of Spain, resulted in displeasures, and not in glory and power. His father, don Jaime, deaf-mute, was forced by his father King Alfonso XIII to sign his abdication; but later, as he wanted to recover his rights as the heir of the overthrown King and head of the House Bourbon, he confronted his brother Juan. This division moved on to their two sons: Alfonso and Juan Carlos. The crown of Spain was at stake. Which one of them would Franco choose?

The dynastic dispute ends, apparently, in 1975, with the proclamation of Juan Carlos as King of Spain. Since then, the Duke of Cadiz is ignored in Spain and his private life appears only in the tabloids: his divorce from his wife, María del Carmen Martínez-Bordiú Franco in 1982; the car accident in which his eldest son Fran died in 1984; his statements to differente journals or his discreet love affair with the beautiful actress Mirta Miller. Such were the issues that the tabloid dealt with… until the Duke of Cadiz returned to Spain in a coffin.