Baby y Crista, las hijas de Alfonso XIII

One hundred years ago, there were two infantas who aroused the curiosity of the public and the press, just as Princess Leonor and her sister Sofía do today. They were Beatriz and María Cristina de Borbón y Battenberg, the daughters of Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia. Baby and Crista, as they were called, were born surrounded by the privileges and rites of a decadent monarchy, but with the stigma of hemophilia, a terrible disease inherited from their mother and their English great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Her childhood and youth were marked by turbulent times and episodes that shaped the recent history of Spain. They also suffered great family tragedies: the unexpected death of two of their brothers, the separation of their parents, dynastic fights... However, they always assured that their flight from Spain, on the morning of April 15, 1931, and the long. and forced exile were her greatest misfortunes. Barely twenty years old, without a kingdom and with an uncertain future, they began a new life in Italy. The two married nobles -Prince Alessandro Torlonia and Count Enrico Marone-Cinzano-, rubbed shoulders with some of the protagonists of the 20th century, formed their own families and, in their later years, got to see the proclamation of their nephew , Juan Carlos de Borbón, as King of Spain.