“If there is someone who has had a really hard childhood, it is Luis Alfonso“says his uncle, Jaime Martínez-Bordiú, for the Lazos de sangre spotlights, who together with his brother Francisco, personal friends of Carmen Martinez-Bordiu and journalists specialising in gossip, review the highlights and shadows of the life of the first granddaughter of dictator Francisco Franco in the third programme of ‘Lazos de sangre’.
And it is that Carmen Martínez-Bordiú (and consequently, the rest of her family), has had a life full of sweet and bitter moments. This time, however, we focus on his second son, Luis Alfonso de Borbón, who in a matter of five years (from the age of ten to fifteen) faced the death of three people who ended up marking his first years of life.
The death of his brother, Francis of Assisi of Bourbon
Francisco, the first son of Carmen Martínez-Bordiú and Don Alfonso de Borbón, dies in a car accident in which Luis Alfonso, his father and his governess were travelling. The car, driven by the Duke of Cadiz, collided sideways with a truck at the entrance to the 101 regional highway following a mishap on the road.
They were all transferred to the Navarra Hospital, but the one with the worst prognosis was Francisco, who was admitted to the medical center with an almost flat encephalogram. Finally, He was kept alive artificially until his mother arrived.
His death caused trauma for the entire family: his father would live with the feeling of guilt for his son’s accident until his death five years later. His mother lived her own grief and learned to live with her loss, but her statements are famous “I think that only someone who has really suffered the death of a child can understand it. It’s like having an arm cut off: you can continue living the same way, but it’s not the same.”
The death of Mathilda Rossi in Acapulco
Six months following the death of her brother Francisco, the daughter of the man who would become Carmen Martínez-Bordiú’s second husband, Mathilda Rossi died in a boat accident in Acapulco following falling from her boat and getting caught in the propellers of a yacht that was sailing next to her.. Luis Alfonso de Borbón, who was present at that moment, once once more witnessed a tragedy.
The fatal skiing accident of his father, the Duke of Cadiz
Five years later, the death of his father in a skiing accident would end up marking a tragic youth for Luis Alfonso de Borbón. On January 30, 1989, the Duke of Cadiz died at the age of 52 at the Beaver Creek Resort in Colorado, United States, following being beheaded by a low cable. and without signs in the middle of the track.
With his mother living in France and his life rebuilt, Luis Alfonso moved to live with his maternal grandparents, maintaining the life and friendships he had built in Spain.
Access all the testimonies and all the details of Carmen Martínez-Bordiú’s life in the latest episode of ‘Lazos de sangre’, now available on RTVE PLAY.
