Infante Carlos, Duke of Calabria

Don Carlos María Alfonso Marcelo de Borbón-Dos Sicilias y Borbón-Parma, Infante of Spain, Duke of Calabria (16 January 1938 – 5 October 2015) was, at his death, the last male infante of Spain during the reigns of his cousins King Juan Carlos I and King Felipe VI.

Additionally, he was also one of two claimants to the headship of the dynasty which ruled the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies prior to its incorporation into the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, in which capacity he was also the Grand Master of one of the three branches of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George.

Early life and education The second of three children and the only son of Infante Alfonso de Borbón-Dos Sicilias y Borbón (1901–1964) and Princess Alicia of Bourbon-Parma (1917–2017), he was born during his parents' exile from republican Spain in Lausanne, Switzerland. As the elder son of Prince Carlo of Bourbon-Two Sicilies by Mercedes, Princess of Asturias (1880–1904), the eldest child of Alfonso XII of Spain, Alfonso had been heir presumptive to the Spanish throne between the death in childbirth of his mother and the birth in May 1907 of a son to his mother's brother, King Alfonso XIII. If Mateu Morral's attempt to assassinate King Alfonso XIII of Spain had succeeded, Infante Alfonso (Infante Carlos's father) would have become at that moment the King of Spain.

Raised from infancy side-by-side with his future king, Juan Carlos I (Carlos's elder by 11 days), the cousins attended school together first in Switzerland and later in Spain. Carlos was chosen by the Spanish pretender, Don Juan de Borbón, Count of Barcelona, to become Juan Carlos's roommate at a boarding school that Don Juan and Spain's dictator Francisco Franco agreed to establish to bring the potential future king from his family's exile in Portugal to be educated in Spain. The school was the site of a country house, Las Jarillas, located 10 miles north of Madrid and donated for the purpose by the Marquess of Urquijo.

Although both were Roman Catholic Bourbons by male-line descent, a disagreement now erupted between the couple's fathers about the dynastic claim of Carlos's father to the legacy of the deposed House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies dynasty, whose last undisputed head, Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, died without a son in January 1960. (born 29 October 1965 in Kifissia) on 27 September 2003. They have four children.

Endeavors Departing Europe to spend a year abroad after his broken engagement, Carlos rounded out his study of the law with internships at several banks in the Americas, notably Chase Manhattan in New York, the National Bank of Mexico and the Banco Popular del Peru.

Honors Dean Knight with Collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece Chancellor Knight with Collar of the Royal Military Order of Alcántara Protector of the Real Cuerpo de la Nobleza of Madrid Maestrante of Sevilla, Zaragoza, Granada, Valencia and Ronda, Member of the Real Cuerpo de la Nobleza of Catalonia Member of the Cofradía del Santo Cáliz of Valencia Patron-President of the Foundation of the Military Order's Hospital of Santiago de Cuenca (Patrono-Presidente de la Fundación de las Ordenes Militares Hospital de Santiago de Cuenca). President of the Spanish Foundation of the United World College, President of the Patronato of the Naval Museum President of the Spanish Confederation of Foundations, President of the Iberoamerican Confederation of Foundations, President of the Foundation of San Benito de Alcántara, and President of the Foundation for the Protection of Nature (Fundación Fondo para la Protección de la Naturaleza). He died on 5 October 2015 at the age of 77, in his finca "La Toledana", in Retuerta del Bullaque. Order of Karađorđe's Star

Under the traditional succession laws of the Kingdom of Navarre, Carlos's mother Infanta Alicia, born a Princess of Bourbon-Parma, was the claimant to that throne, which was formally united with the Kingdom of France in the seventeenth century. She was also the closest known genealogical representative of King Edward the Confessor, and the direct genealogical representative of King David I of Scotland.

Arms

Ancestry