Early life and education Alfonso XIII was born at the
Royal Palace of Madrid on 17 May 1886. He was the posthumous son of
Alfonso XII of Spain, who had died in November 1885, and became king upon his birth. Just after he was born, he was carried naked to the prime minister
Práxedes Mateo Sagasta on a silver tray. Five days later, he was carried in a solemn court procession with a
Golden Fleece around his neck and was baptised with water specially brought from the
River Jordan in Palestine. The French newspaper described the young king in 1889 as "the happiest and best-loved of all the rulers of the earth". His mother,
Maria Christina of Austria, served as his regent until his sixteenth birthday. During the regency, in 1898, Spain lost its colonial rule over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States as a result of the
Spanish–American War. Alfonso became seriously ill during the
1889–1890 pandemic. His health deteriorated around 10 January 1890, and doctors reported his condition as the flu attacked his nervous system leaving the young king in a state of indolence. He eventually recovered. When Alfonso came of age in May 1902, the week of his majority was marked by festivities, bullfights, balls and receptions throughout Spain. He took his oath to the constitution before members of the
Cortes on 17 May. Alfonso received, to a large extent, a military education that imbued him with "a
Spanish nationalism strengthened by his military vocation".
Engagement and marriage for the funeral of King Edward VII, photographed on 20 May 1910. Standing, from left to right:
Haakon VII of Norway,
Ferdinand I of Bulgaria,
Manuel II of Portugal,
Wilhelm II of Germany,
George I of Greece and
Albert I of Belgium. Seated, from left to right: Alfonso XIII of Spain,
George V of the United Kingdom and
Frederick VIII of Denmark.By 1905, Alfonso was looking for a suitable consort. On a state visit to the
United Kingdom, he stayed in London at
Buckingham Palace with King
Edward VII. There he met Princess
Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, the daughter of Edward VII's youngest sister
Princess Beatrice, and a granddaughter of
Queen Victoria. He found her attractive, and she returned his interest. There were obstacles to the marriage. Victoria was a
Protestant, and would have to become a Catholic. Victoria's brother,
Leopold, was a
haemophiliac, so there was a 50 percent chance that Victoria was a carrier of the trait. Finally, Alfonso's mother Maria Christina wanted him to marry a member of her family, the
House of Habsburg-Lorraine, or some other Catholic princess, as she considered the Battenbergs to be non-dynastic. Victoria was willing to change her religion, and her being a haemophilia carrier was only a possibility. Maria Christina was eventually persuaded to drop her opposition. In January 1906 she wrote an official letter to Princess Beatrice proposing the match. Victoria met Maria Christina and Alfonso in
Biarritz, France, later that month, and converted to Catholicism in
San Sebastián in March. on their wedding day In May, diplomats of both kingdoms officially executed the agreement of marriage. Alfonso and Victoria were married at the
Royal Monastery of San Jerónimo in Madrid on 31 May 1906, with British royalty in attendance, including Victoria's cousins the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King
George V and
Queen Mary). The wedding was marked by
an assassination attempt on Alfonso and Victoria by Catalan
anarchist Mateu Morral. As the wedding procession returned to the palace, he threw a bomb from a window which killed 30 bystanders and members of the procession, while 100 others were wounded. The royal couple was saved by a carriage lined with bulletproof material developed by the Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik. On 10 May 1907, the couple's first child,
Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, was born. Victoria was in fact a haemophilia carrier, and Alfonso inherited the condition. Neither of the two daughters born to the King and Queen were haemophilia carriers, but another of their sons,
Gonzalo (1914–1934), had the condition. Alfonso distanced himself from his wife for transmitting the condition to their sons. From 1914 on, he had several mistresses, and fathered five illegitimate children. A sixth illegitimate child had been born before his marriage.
World War I in 1919 During
World War I, because of his family connections with both sides and the division of popular opinion, Spain remained neutral. The King established an office for assistance to prisoners of war on all sides. This office used the Spanish diplomatic and military network abroad to intercede for thousands of POWs – transmitting and receiving letters for them, and other services. Alfonso became gravely ill during the
1918 flu pandemic. Spain was neutral and thus under no wartime censorship restrictions, so his illness and subsequent recovery were reported to the world, while flu outbreaks in the belligerent countries were concealed. This gave the misleading impression that Spain was the most affected area and led to the pandemic being dubbed "the Spanish Flu".
Cracking of the system and dictatorship Following World War I, Spain entered the lengthy yet victorious
Rif War (1920–1926) to preserve its colonial rule over northern Morocco. Critics of the monarchy thought the war was an unforgivable loss of money and lives, and nicknamed Alfonso
el Africano ("the African"). Alfonso had not acted as a strict constitutional monarch, and supported the
Africanists who wanted to conquer for Spain a new empire in Africa to compensate for the lost empire in the Americas and elsewhere. The Rif War had starkly polarized Spanish society between the Africanists who wanted to conquer an empire in Africa vs. the
abandonistas who wanted to abandon Morocco as not worth the blood and treasure. Alfonso liked to play favourites with his generals, and one of his most favoured generals was
Manuel Fernández Silvestre. In 1921, when Silvestre advanced up into the
Rif mountains of Morocco, Alfonso sent him a telegram whose first line read "Hurrah for real men!", urging Silvestre not to retreat at a time when Silvestre was experiencing major difficulties. Silvestre stayed the course, leading his men into the
Battle of Annual, one of Spain's worst defeats. Alfonso, who was on holiday in the south of France at the time, was informed of the "Disaster of the Annual" while he was playing
golf. Reportedly, Alfonso's response to the news was to shrug his shoulders and say "Chicken meat is cheap", before resuming his game. Alfonso remained in France and did not return to Spain to comfort the families of the soldiers lost in the battle, which many people at the time saw as a callous and cold act, a sign that the King was indifferent over the lives of his soldiers. In 1922, the Cortes started an investigation into the responsibility for the Annual disaster and soon discovered evidence that the King had been one of the main supporters of Silvestre's advance into the Rif mountains. , 1928 After the "Disaster of the Annual", Spain's war in the Rif went from bad to worse, and as the Spanish were barely hanging on to Morocco, support for the
abandonistas grew as many people could see no point to the war. Primo de Rivera ruled as a dictator with the king's support until January 1930. During the dictatorship, the king increased his public presence, siding with a Catholic,
anti-Catalanist, dictatorial and militarist brand of Spanish nationalism. In 1925, Alfonso was the target of
an assassination plot by Catalan separatists while in Barcelona. While the attempt was foiled, Miguel Primo de Rivera used the incident to further solidify his rule. On 28 January 1930, amid economic problems, general unpopularity and a putschist plot led by General
Manuel Goded in motion, of which Alfonso XIII was most probably aware, Miguel Primo de Rivera was forced to resign, exiling to Paris, only to die a few weeks later of the complications from
diabetes in combination with the effects of a
flu. Alfonso XIII appointed General
Dámaso Berenguer as the new prime minister. Back in 1926, Alfonso XIII had appointed Berenguer as Chief of Staff of the Military House of the King, a post conventionally fit for burned-out generals in order to move them away from the spotlight for a time in a show of affection. The new period was nicknamed as
dictablanda. The King was so closely associated with the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera that it was difficult for him to distance himself from the regime that he had supported for almost seven years. The enforced changes relied on the incorrect assumption that Spaniards would accept the notion that nothing had happened after 1923 and that going back to the prior state of things was possible. ==Dethronement and politics in exile==