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The Duchess of Alba with her third husband, Alfonso Diez Carabantes Photo: EUROPA PRESS/GETTY

The 18th Duchess of Alba, who has died aged 88, was Spain’s richest woman and a regular fixture in Hola! magazine and other gossip publications on account of her forthright character and colourful private life.

In later life, with her flamboyant manner and shock of frizzy hair (sometimes dyed a whimsical red, at other times a snowy white), the thrice-married Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart fascinated and appalled in almost equal measure.

Known for her piping, querulous voice and often outrageous clothes, she was frequently photographed at society weddings and at bullfights. Her passions were flamenco, horses and painting; she became the subject of a television series and a flamenco show based around her life.

Then, of course, there was her status as an exemplar of the plastic surgeon’s art. She always denied needing any assistance to enhance features which had once earned her a reputation as a beauty; and any suggestion to the contrary was considered an intrusion too far by most of the Spanish press. None the less, a website specialising in such matters claimed to have discovered evidence of a facelift, brow lift, rhinoplasties, lip injections, fat injections to the face and multiple injections of Botox. “She overdid it, obviously,” a family friend was quoted as saying.

The Spanish media estimated the duchess’s wealth at between €600 million and €3.5 billion; her landholdings were said to be so vast that she would have been able to cross Spain from north to south without setting foot on anyone else’s property.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, she had more titles than any other person on the planet, being a duchess seven times over, a countess 22 times and a marquesa 24 times. Yet the Duchess always insisted she was not rich: “I have a lot of artworks, but I can’t eat them, can I?” she once said. Apart from thousands of paintings by Goya, Velazquez, Titian and others lining the walls of her numerous palaces, her collection included a first edition of Don Quixote, Columbus’s first map of America and the last will and testament of Ferdinand the Catholic, the father of Catherine of Aragon.

As head of the five centuries-old House of Alba, the Duchess’s privileges included not having to kneel before the Pope and the right to ride a horse into Seville cathedral. It was also said that, owing to her illustrious lineage, she was entitled to demand ceremonial precedence over the Spanish royal family. But she made little use of these historic perks, preferring the delights of a high-rolling lifestyle that began in England where her father, the 17th Duke of Alba, was Spanish ambassador during the Second World War.

^{The Duchess of Alba, c. 1947 (GETTY/HULTON ARCHIVE)}

María del Rosario Cayetana Paloma Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Fernanda Teresa Francisca de Paula Lourdes Antonia Josefa Fausta Rita Castor Dorotea Santa Esperanza Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva Falcó y Gurtubay was born in her family’s neo-Classical Palacio de Liria in Madrid on March 28 1926, the only child of Don Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart y Falcó, 17th Duke of Alba, and Doña María del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay, 9th Marquesa of San Vicente del Barco. Her godmother was Queen Victoria Eugenia of Spain.

On her father’s side, Cayetana was a descendant of King James II of England through his illegitimate son James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick, born of a relationship with Arabella Churchill, only sister of the Duke of Marlborough. This made her a distant relative of both Sir Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales, descendants of Arabella’s daughter Henrietta Fitz-James.

Other ancestors included Don Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, known as “the Iron Duke” on account of the ruthlessness with which he put down revolt as governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1567 to 1573, and Doña María del Pilar de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, a muse of Francisco Goya.

Cayetana did not have a happy childhood. Her mother died when she was eight, and three years later her father (a fervent monarchist who had served briefly under King Alfonso XIII as minister for foreign affairs in the government of General Dámaso Berenguer) took her to London, where he had been appointed ambassador for the Spanish Nationalist government.

^{The Duchess of Alba on her marriage to Don Pedro Luis Martínez de Irujo y Artacoz, 1947 (REX)}

He was still the ambassador in 1940 when the British government recognised Franco’s regime, and the pair remained in London during the Second World War. In 1945, however, the Duke resigned his post, declaring that the Franco regime was “harmful to the best interests of Spain” after negotiations with the exiled pretender to the Spanish throne, Don Juan de Bourbon, whose claims the Duke had supported, broke down.

During the Spanish Civil War, the Albas’ Liria Palace had been occupied by the communists, and for that reason it was almost completely destroyed by German bombers in 1936. The Duke had taken the precaution of storing its priceless collection of paintings in the cellars of the Prado and the Bank of Spain, but around half the palace’s literary collection was destroyed and many other items were looted. On his return to Spain the Duke set about rebuilding the palace according to the original plans, work carried on after his death by Cayetana. It was largely due to her persistence that the palace remained a private residence.

Cayetana was considered a beauty in her youth and was reputed to have had a lively love life. In 1947 she married Don Pedro Luis Martínez de Irujo y Artacoz, a naval officer and son of the Duke of Sotomayor, in a ceremony at Seville Cathedral which cost an estimated £2 million in today’s terms and was described at the time as “the most expensive wedding in the world”. The ceremony was so grand that there was concern it would overshadow the nuptials of Britain’s future Queen, held a month later in austerity Britain.

The bride wore a white satin gown modelled on the dress worn by Napoleon III’s bride Empress Eugénie. After the ceremony the couple travelled through cheering crowds to the bride’s family’s Seville palace of Las Dueñas in a carriage pulled by mules.

^{The Duchess of Alba in 2011 (REX)}

Cayetana succeeded as Duchess of Alba on her father’s death in 1953, and she and her first husband had five sons and a daughter. However, the father of her fourth son, Fernando, was widely rumoured to have been not her husband but the Sevillian flamenco dancer Antonio el Bailarin, who acknowledged his parentage in posthumously published memoirs. When the information was subsequently repeated in an article in the Spanish magazine Interviú, however, a Spanish court awarded the Duchess €90,000 in damages, describing the offending piece as an assault on her honour.

Her first husband died in 1972, and six years later the Duchess shocked Spanish society by marrying Jesus Aguirre y Ortiz de Zarate, an unfrocked Jesuit priest and freethinking intellectual 11 years her junior who had once been her confessor. It was not so much his dubious religious credentials that were considered scandalous, however, as the fact that he was illegitimate.

Yet their marriage was happy – so much so, in fact, that when Aguirre sent three love poems he had written for Cayetana to Julio Iglesias, asking him to set them to music, the singer refused, considering them too steamy. When, in 1988, the gossip pages reported strains in the marriage, Cayetana, then 62, responded: “We are happy, as happy as before. And, if you must know, we make love every night.” Except that “make” and “love” were not the words used.

After Aguirre’s death, in 2001, it was generally assumed that the Duchess, now in her mid-70s, would live her twilight years alone. But a few years later she was reported to be dating Alfonso Diez Carabantes, a minor civil servant in Spain’s department of social security and a man 24 years her junior. “When you get to know someone and you like them, you end up falling in love a little and I fell in love with him,” she revealed in a magazine interview in 2008.

On several occasions the Duchess’s children, apparently fearful of being separated from some of their inheritance by a man portrayed by detractors as a gold-digger, were said to have blocked the couple’s plans to tie the knot. In 2008 the House of Alba issued a statement saying that the relationship “was based on a long friendship and there are no plans to marry”. In June 2011 the Duchess’s youngest son, Cayetano, announced that his mother could not marry for a third time “owing to questions of historic responsibility”. At one point Spain’s King Juan Carlos was alleged to have telephoned the Duchess to urge her to think again.

The Duchess was resentful of her children’s interference, noting, pointedly, that they had all been divorced; so, by implication, they had no right to give her moral lectures. “I don’t know why my children are causing problems,” she complained on Spanish radio. “We aren’t hurting anyone. Alfonso doesn’t want anything, he’s renounced everything. He doesn’t want anything but me.”

In August 2011, however, the prospect of a damaging rift in Spain’s most prominent noble house appeared to have been averted after a deal was made under which the Duchess agreed to divide up her fortune between her children in advance of her death — and her groom renounced any possible claim to her wealth.

She and Diez then married, and after the wedding in Seville she entertained onlookers by kicking off her shoes and hiking up her dress to perform a flamenco dance outside her palace.

The Duchess is survived by her husband and children. Her eldest son, Carlos Fitz-James Stuart, 14th Duke of Huéscar, born in 1948, inherits the Alba titles.

The 18th Duchess of Alba, born March 28 1926, died November 19 2014

Alistair Darling is right to stress the disastrous consequences of Britain leaving the EU (We’re better together with Europe, so must learn from Scotland, 18 November), and he’s just as correct in saying that those of us who recognise this (at least 50% of the population, according to the polls) need to get much, much noisier about saying so, while stressing the need for significant reform.

However, Mr Darling remains as obscure as most politicians and commentators on what such EU reform might look like. A far greater emphasis on growth, sure – but what would that actually look like? And what about the structural issues that underpin many people’s distrust of Europe? How about the Labour party adopting a policy that says we should: a) abolish the Strasbourg parliament, b) reduce the number of MEPs by a third, c) reduce their ridiculous salaries by a third, d) reduce their even more absurd expenses by half, and e), most important, abolish EU commissioners and make MEPs earn their corn by taking full responsibility for strategy and policy. They would have to elect their own president and allocate areas of responsibility. That might seriously reduce the unpopular movement towards ever-greater integration by ridding us of the unelected bureaucrats and the behind-closed-doors horse-trading about positions of power.

What savings and a huge increase in democratic accountability there would be. I’d then be interested to know what my north-west MEPs were actually doing and voting for, as well as who they had supported for key posts. It won’t happen, I know, but we might be surprised to find how many people across the EU thought it a good idea.
John Rowe
Rochdale

• One might have thought that creating a strong cross-party alliance on EU membership might come in handy in a future referendum, so what purpose is served by comparing the Scottish National party (pro-Europe) to Ukip (anti-Europe)? Labour needs to set aside its resentment of the SNP’s success if it is to win the argument for continued EU membership, and must come up with more convincing arguments than “reform” and “jobs and growth”, which are already EU priorities. The EU is pursuing similar neoliberal policies to those of New Labour, so what reforms does Labour think are now needed to convince British voters that the EU is acting in their interests? The Better Together campaign nearly failed in Scotland because it had no positive vision, and only rescued the situation through last-minute threats and promises that may or may not be delivered. So what is Labour’s vision for Britain in Europe?
Mary Braithwaite
Wye, Kent

• John Major claims that the current British anti-EU hysteria “is not a political ploy to gain advantages and concessions” (Major urges EU to realise that British frustration is ‘no game’, 14 November). But that is exactly what it is.

The chances of Britain leaving are minuscule. Should opinion polls indicate such a possibility in a referendum, the British establishment – which benefits greatly from EU membership – will press the panic button, as it did so successfully before the Scottish referendum. The media will suddenly be filled with daily horror stories of impending doom, economic collapse and isolation outside the EU.

London, the most global city in the world, would be more likely to secede from Ukip-land than accept Britain leaving Europe.
Jakob von Uexkull
Founder, World Future Council

• With all respect to the NUT, the GMB and the other signatories to the letter regarding the commission’s reactions to a proposed European Citizens’ Initiative regarding the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (We demand the right to challenge the TTIP, 18 November), a lawsuit would no doubt be costly and would not get very far. Far better to lodge their protest as a petition, under the terms of article 227 of the EU treaty, and ensure that the voice of citizens is heard where it belongs, in the European parliament. Indeed the parliament has, not surprisingly, registered several on this subject.

Not so long ago more than 2 million people signed a petition to the European parliament against Acta, the anti-piracy agreement, and that did not do so badly, having ensured an animated and well-informed debate in the petitions committee before a landmark vote in plenary session.

It does not help to confuse, as the authors also did, a petition and an ECI, but it is a common failing. The right to petition is a fundamental right of EU citizenship and open to all citizens and residents; the ECI, although defined in article 11 of the Lisbon treaty, is subject to an additional (and in my view too cumbersome) regulation that the commission has entirely respected in its decision. Check out the Europarl web-site; it is quite transparent.
David Lowe
Head of secretariat, petitions committee, European parliament

Nik Wood’s assertion that Peabody is contributing to London’s affordable housing crisis (Letters, 14 November) is incorrect. In fact we are building thousands of new affordable homes for Londoners. We are also investing £150m in improvements to residents’ homes and estates. Housing need extends across all tenures, and while we continue to provide new social housing we also provide intermediate and market rent as well as homes for sale on the open market. We also spend around £4m a year on community investment activities.

The rents on the properties we acquired from the crown estate in 2011 are intermediate rents for key workers capped at 60% of the market rent, with many tenants paying significantly less than that. Despite running these homes at a loss – spending more money than we receive in rental income – we have not applied the maximum rent increases set out in the sale agreement for the last two years. We are cutting rent increases again next year, and have reduced the rent where the level exceeds the local housing allowance limit for the area. In addition, we have invested over £7m on improvements to the former crown estate properties since 2011, with further investment planned in the coming years.

To correct a further inaccuracy, our surplus for 2013-14 was £35m (plus £256m, which is not cash but an accounting treatment that reflects the acquisition of Gallions housing association). Every penny we generate is reinvested to provide more affordable homes, and to enable us to continue our investment in quality homes, services and communities.
Stephen Howlett
Chief executive, Peabody

• We need a moratorium on property speculation in the UK while some sense is injected into the housing market. That might even limit the inevitable rise in the cost of housing benefit to the taxpayer. The application of free market principles to the provision of affordable homes to buy or to rent was certain to hurt tenants (Tenants face Christmas evictions after rent deal revoked, 17 November). The damage began on the day the Thatcher government abolished rent controls and allowed the free flow of national and international wealth into a housing market short on supply. Council estates that need refurbishment are now set for demolition for any reason councils short of funds can cook up.
Here in Tottenham the Love Lane estate must go, they say, to improve a deprived area and make way for a smart walkway from a new White Hart Lane station to the new Spurs football arena. This is not slum clearance but pure exploitation of the housing market by national and international property developers and landlords regardless of the need for affordable shelter of the sitting tenants, leaseholders, and those who bought the freehold since they had the right to buy.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

• If Ed Miliband wants a cause to rally popular support, let’s hear him on the subject of the New Era estate, with an explanation of how social housing came to be flogged to a predatory US-based landlord, and an assurance that such a thing could never happen under a Labour government.
Jim Trimmer
Kingston upon Thames

• I’ve been saying to my WEA classes since 2010 that Labour’s next election slogan should be the winning “housing, housing, housing”.
David L Alfred
Brighton

• There is a world of difference between Holyrood’s and Westminster’s approaches to the housing crisis. Last year, the Scottish government reintroduced a sufficient level of capital subsidy to ensure the future of affordable social rented accommodation both by housing associations and councils. “Affordable” means that someone in relatively low-paid employment or on a limited fixed income could be able to pay rent (of about £72-75 a week) and come off housing benefit. Simultaneously, the Scottish government scrapped the right to buy. The Westminster coalition, however, not only scrapped funding support for social housing in England but also extended the right to buy. And the Scottish government has maximised the use of discretionary housing payments to those seriously adversely affected by welfare reforms. These initiatives appear to have received if not cross-party support then at least only muted criticism from the other parties in Holyrood.
Craig Sanderson
Edinburgh

Reading Ian Jack’s column (Sorry, would-be sandwich makers: you’ll find it much harder to get a job than I did, 15 November) made me reflect on how much has changed with respect to employment opportunities and social mobility over the past 50-odd years. My CV illustrates this point perfectly. I left school in 1959, aged 15 with no qualifications. Over the next year or so I was sacked from three jobs (for instance, for nibbling at the rounds of cheese in the cellar when working as a shop assistant in a grocer’s), yet each time was able to walk into another job with no intervening periods of unemployment. Eventually, still with no educational qualifications, I was accepted for nurse training. I became a state registered nurse, qualifying in 1966. I wasn’t a very good nurse and sought new opportunities. After an uncertain period in which I, among other things, sold brushes door-to-door, worked as a labourer in a steel mill and suffered periods of unemployment, I had a stroke of good fortune in 1968 when, working as a clerk at a sportswear manufacturers, I was accepted for training as a computer programmer. I worked in information technology until 1989, when I went to Ruskin College (John Prescott’s alma mater) to study history. After 30 years, I had found my role. After 25 years’ studying, teaching and researching history, I am now a semi-retired university lecturer.
Dr Neil Redfern
Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire

• While Linda Tirado poignantly documents the pain and humiliation of poverty in the UK (G2, 17 November), she doesn’t go far enough in her analysis of its origins. Of course capitalism needs its winners and losers and of course at the moment the winners feel they can safely condemn the losers. But this is not because Paul Ryan or Iain Duncan Smith are more loathsome than other cheerleaders for the neoliberal bandwagon. There is nothing personal in their attacks but to argue that they mean well is ludicrous. They do what they do because it’s what the system requires. A fear of pauperisation is vital if people are to be persuaded not to reject whatever zero-hours contract or minimum-wage-plus-humiliation job they are offered, and there is no greater cause of fear than not being able to feed yourself or your children. How long before we see the Victorian workhouse making its reappearance?
Tony Owen
London

With tragic irony, the road crash that claimed the lives of five teenagers near Doncaster on Saturday night (Report, 17 November) took place on the eve of the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, as well as the start of Road Safety Week. Instituted by the charity RoadPeace in 1993 and adopted by the UN in 2005, the Day of Remembrance is held annually on the third Sunday of November, and over 30 church services were held all over the UK last Sunday. At the event I attended in Barnsley, just a few miles from the crash site, we were reminded that the grief and trauma felt by the victims’ families and friends are intensified by the fact that in nearly every case such road deaths are entirely avoidable given good conduct, discipline and law enforcement. Small charities such as RoadPeace and Brake can do little to raise awareness of the need for safe roads, which are needed to protect us all as road users. Death and injury are a national and a worldwide tragedy, and governments and statutory organisations have a major role to play. The worldwide toll of well over 1 million road traffic deaths each year indicates we have many miles to go before we can say that this collective agony has been brought under some sort of control. It will be good to hear what our government is doing or plans to do to meet this urgent requirement.
Rev Barry Parker
Leeds

While a Guardian guide to the erosion of public services by private corporations would be very useful (Letters, 19 November), there is some research already out there on who owns Britain and who sold it. George Monbiot’s 2000 book Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain answers many of Richard Gravil’s questions. Our own book The Trojan Horse: The Growth of Commercial Sponsorship updates Monbiot’s work, and has a useful appendix which lists the key “providers” and their role in public services.
Deborah Philips Professor of literature and cultural history, University of Brighton
Garry Whannel Professor of media arts, University of Bedfordshire

• Myleene Klass is clearly very exercised by the possibility of a future Labour government giving her rich friends and herself the choice between downsizing or paying a mansion tax (Miliband bruised in Klass war over tax, 19 November). Presumably she is equally exercised by the current Tory-led government’s offer to those at the opposite end of the financial spectrum of the choice between downsizing or paying a bedroom tax.
Professor Jennifer Jenkins
Southampton

• Hugh Muir should not be surprised by the chatter at the O2 (Notebook, 18 November). The whole atmosphere at the Barclays-sponsored tennis event was crass, from the loud music played at intervals to the dramatised announcements of the players and their obvious embarrassment as each led a small child by the hand while entering the arena. Perhaps next year we can expect cheerleaders.
Ron Houghton
London

• If that really is a photograph of “Sea and sky in harmony at Alnwick” (Weatherwatch, 19 November), global warming has far exceeded even the wildest forecasts. Last time I checked, Alnwick was five miles inland.
John Mathieson
Northampton

• The gender-neutral pronoun in widespread use is not the Esperantesque “ze” (Shortcuts, G2, 18 November) but “they”, used as a singular: ugly but effective.
Guy Dugdale
London

Sir, The appalling and brutal murders carried out in a synagogue in Jerusalem during morning prayers this week (“Deaths push Jerusalem to brink of holy war”, Nov 19) are to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. The desecration of the sacred, taking life in a house of prayer, is the absolute antithesis of faith and of what we stand for. This attack on people at prayer is yet another example from across the globe of violence in the name of religion, which undermines religious freedom. We appeal to the believers of all traditions to denounce such attacks wherever in our world they take place and to call for an end to religiously motivated violence.

The Most Rev Justin Welby Archbishop of Canterbury
Ephraim Mirvis Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra

Sir, There is, rightly, outrage at the synagogue massacre; there should also be outrage at Benjamin Netanyahu’s response, which will ensure the cycles of “getting even” go on. It seems we are lacking a statesman capable not only of halting this spiral of violence but even understanding it.

Dominic Kirkham
Manchester

Sir, Foreign secretary Philip Hammond calls for peace between the Palestinians and the Jews. Surely he should be calling for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, whether the Israelis be Jewish, Druze, Christian, Bahá’í or indeed Muslim. The tragedy is that a separate state called Palestine would not have such a variety of believers.

Tamara Selig
Stanmore, Middx

Sir, I have found that when someone shouts at me, shouting back rarely makes things better. My daughter is in Israel at present. I would feel more confident about her safety if the Israeli government took a more measured approach to the inexcusable terrorist murders.

James Goldman
London NW4

Sir, Thousands of Israelis, both Jews and Muslims, including the president and heads of both religions, attended the funeral of Zidan Saif, the Druze policeman killed in the attack. In this deeply conflicted part of the Middle East where the positions of the Arab Muslim and Israeli Jewish parties appear intractable, the Druze, a Muslim community living in Israel, should be seen as a model of cooperation on which to build.

Dr R Rosenfelder
London NW6

Sir, Your correspondent Catherine Philp puts the cart before the horse (“Jerusalem braced for holy war”, Nov 20). The conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours did not begin as “territorial and political,” now “morphing into religious war.” Its origins were always fundamentally religious in nature — the notion of Jewish self-determination in any part of the “Dar el-Islam” [The House of Islam] being a challenge to Islamic jurisprudence.
Israel’s chief rabbinate may have forbidden Jews from entering the Temple Mount, but other rabbis have ruled differently. In any case, it is for each individual Jew to make up his or her mind on this issue. If Christians and Moslems can pray at this site, why not Jews?

Professor Geoffrey Alderman
University of Buckingham

Sir, It is 20 years since Baruch Goldstein slaughtered 29 Muslims and wounded 125 others as the prayed in the Mosque of Abraham in Hebron. His house was not demolished and though some of his supporters in the extreme right-wing Meir Kahane group were briefly held, it was the Palestinians of Hebron who were punished for this atrocity: their movements became ever more restricted, and half their mosque was converted into a synagogue.
As we rush to condemn those who have applauded the synagogue attack in Jerusalem, let us remember that Goldstein’s grave became a place of pilgrimage for Israeli settlers — more than 10,000 visited it before it was demolished by the Israeli government.

Brigid Waddams
Batcombe, Somerset

Sir, I write with regard to your report on migration (Nov 19). First, the subject is understated by some media which refer simply to net migration, and second, there is unbalanced criticism of the EU by the failure to make a distinction between immigration from EU and non-EU countries.

For the year ending March 2014 there were 560,000 immigrants of whom almost half were from non-EU countries. The government can do nothing about EU immigrants while we remain within the EU. It does, however, have responsibility for non-EU immigration and it seems to have lost control of this. In the same year, 316,000 people left the UK, making it likely that the UK is less British by almost one million people. No wonder there is growing public concern.
Lord Kilclooney
House of Lords