Word: alfonso
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...Egypt, King Fuad is the monarch; and Great Britain is the master. In Russia, the proletariat is sovereign; but the Moscow oligarchy is the keeper of the sovereignty. In Italy, Vitorio Emanuele is King; and Benito Mussolini is master. So Spain, too, has her monarchs and masters. King Alfonso is the real master; Primo Rivera is an accident which was the result of a revolt (TIME, Sept. 24, 1923). He was not strong enough to fight the Monarchy, even had he wished to. For the moment, he had obtained the master hand. Alfonso was forced to recognize him or start...
...cold November day in 1885, King Alfonso XII breathed his last as the oppressive gloom of winter settled over Madrid. His royal spouse, the Habsburg Maria Christina, became Regent for her five-year-old daughter Maria-de-las Mercedes. In Spain, the season of the people's discontent was upon them. Progressive ideas were seething in reactionary cauldrons. Under a Queen such as little Maria, who was sure to be dominated all her life by her mother's ideas, Spain could only expect to see the new wine of her progressive aspirations poured down the neck of the grandee...
...with the joyous feelings born of spring. Not much later in the day, an event which put the sun in an unnatural eclipse was announced: The Dowager Queen Maria had given birth to a son, six months after the death of her husband. No longer was little Maria Queen; Alfonso XIII, a baby not yet in swaddling clothes, had in theory become King from the minute of his birth. Madrid was burned to a cinder in a great fire of enthusiasm; and the conflagration spread rapidly to the provinces...
Sixteen years of titular kingships under a domineering regency was necessary before the boy-King was to assume control. Whatever hopes the people had placed in Alfonso XIII were instantly blighted. To the man-in-the-street he appeared to be the paragon of haughty despotism?a king caring only for the external magnificance of his court, depending only on the conservative grandees and the bigoted prelates for advice. His former popularity had vanished like snow upon the desert...
About this time, talk of marriage was heard; and, not long after, Alfonso set out for a tour of the Courts. Although there was not a court at Paris, that Capital had always appealed to him as being filled to overflowing with the most voluptuous of damsels. So at Paris, on his return from visiting Uncle Fred (Archduke Friedrich) in Austria, President Loubet and his Ministers welcomed the King of Spain; and all he got out of the visit, besides a rousing reception, was a night at the Opéra when he narrowly escaped assassination at the hands...