Carlos Hugo was the son of Xavier, Duke of Parma, and Madeleine de Bourbon-Busset and was baptized Hugues Marie Sixte Robert Louis Jean Georges Benoît Michel. He was a direct male descendant of Louis XIV. On 28 June 1963 he was officially renamed Charles Hugues, by judgment of the court of appeal of la Seine, France.
In 1977, his father died, and Carlos Hugo succeeded him claiming the thrones of Parma, Etruria and Spain. He was a French citizen, and from 1980, a naturalized Spanish citizen.
Carlism is a Spanish political movement founded in the 19th century which upholded the claim of Carlos Hugo's branch of the House of Bourbon to the Spanish throne.
The movement split between the followers of Carlos Hugo and his socialist and liberal reforms and the traditionalists who rejected him including his younger brother Sixto Enrique who refused to accept him as king,
In May 1976, a year after Franco's death, two Carlist sympathizers from the Carlos Hugo faction were shot down by far-right terrorists during an annual Carlist convocation. Among the terrorists were Stefano Delle Chiaie and members of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), with logistic support from Francoist elements inside Spanish intelligence agencies and the Civil Guard.[3][4] This incident became known as the Montejurra massacre.[5]
In a private letter, Don Javier claimed that at Montejurra "the Carlists have confronted the revolutionaries", which has been interpreted as the followers of Don Sixto being the real Carlists according to Don Javier.[6]
On 4 March, accompanied by his son Sixto, Don Javier was interviewed by the Spanish press and his responses showed Carlist orthodoxy. That same day he issued a declaration certified by a Paris notary objecting to his name being used to legitimize a "grave doctrinal error within Carlism", and implicitly disowned the political line promoted by Carlos Hugo.[7] In order to justify that declaration, Carlos Hugo alerted the police that his father had been abducted by Sixto, an accusation which was denied publicly by Don Javier himself, who had to be hospitalized heavily affected by the scandal generated.[8]
Shortly afterwards Don Javier issued another declaration, certified by a different Paris notary, confirming his oldest son as "my only political successor and head of Carlism".[9] Then it was Doña Magdalena who declared that her husband had been taken by Carlos Hugo from hospital against medical advice and his own will, and that Carlos Hugo had threatened his father to obtain his signature on the second declaration.[10] Eventually Don Javier was transferred to Switzerland, where he soon died. The widow blamed the oldest son and three daughters for his death.[11] She repudiated and disinherited her children Carlos Hugo, María Teresa, Cecilia and Nieves, and ordered that upon her death they could not attend the wake for his corpse in the castle of Lignières.[12]
On 28 September 2003 at Arbonne in France, Carlos Hugo re-asserted his Carlist claim.[13]
Marriage and family
Carlos Hugo and Princess Irene in 1964Carlos Hugo and Princess Irene in 1978
Carlos Hugo's engagement to Princess Irene of the Netherlands, daughter of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, caused a constitutional crisis in the Netherlands for several reasons. Irene lost her rights of succession to the Dutch throne because the government refused to enact a law permitting the marriage. Her mother could not go to Madrid to talk Irene out of the marriage and of her conversion to Catholicism because the government advised her against it. The issue that prevented the government from making a law permitting the marriage was Carlos's claim to the Spanish throne. The Dutch government saw international political difficulties arising from a possible heir to the Dutch throne holding a controversial claim to the throne of a foreign state.[citation needed]
Princess Cecilia of Bourbon-Parme (17 October 2013)
Carlos Enrique Leonard, Hereditary Prince of Bourbon-Parma (24 April 2016)
Princess Margarita María Beatriz of Bourbon Parma (13 October 1972) she married Edwin de Roy van Zuydewijn on 22 September 2001 and they were divorced on 8 November 2006. She remarried Tjalling Siebe ten Cate on 2 May 2008. They have two daughters:
In 2003, his daughter Margarita revealed that her father had an illegitimate son with a former nursery maid, called Javier, born in 1983.[18]
Death
In February 2008 it was revealed that Carlos Hugo was being treated for cancer. On 2 August 2010, he announced, via his official website, that his health was further deteriorating.[19] He died on 18 August 2010 in Barcelona at the age of 80. Carlos Hugo's remains were taken from Barcelona to The Hague and were laid in state for family members and close relatives in the Fagel Dome on the estate of the Noordeinde Palace (one of the three official palaces of the Dutch royal family). On 28 August, the body was transported to Parma in Italy and interred in the crypt of the Sanctuary of Santa Maria della Steccata.[20]
Carlos-Hugo claimed the headship of the Constantinian Order of Saint George as hereditary heir to the House of Farnese's Duchy of Parma, the Farnese dukes having been recognised as grand masters of the order in 1699, although in 1706 the church of Rome confirmed the order's grand magistry to the Farnese's heirs (the House of Bourbon since 1731) in accordance with male primogeniture.
As a claimant to the throne of Spain, Carlos Hugo also claimed to be the Grand Master of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece[citation needed] At his funeral the chain of the Order of the Golden Fleece was put on his coffin, and the prince wore the insignia of the order during his marriage.
^Bernier Arcand, Philippe, « Les Bourbon-Parme dans les institutions d’enseignement du Québec », Histoire Québec, 202, p. 24-28 (lire en ligne [archive])
^According to his younger son, it was an "enforced abdication". Caspistegui Gorasurreta 1997, p. 272, Rodón Guinjoan 2015, p. 591. his eldest son assumed the title of Carlos Hugo I. Clemente 2013, p. 28
^Mediterraneo 08.03.77, available here; full text in Clemente 2013, p. 137
^La Vanguardia, 09-03-77, available here; what has actually happened is unclear and remains subject to conflicting accounts. The most detailed one is in Heras y Borrero 2010, pp. 127–133. The author claims that around 20 February 1977 Don Javier, accompanied by Françoise Marie and her husband Prince Edouard de Lobkowicz, withdrew to their Granville cottage in Normandy, according to a letter from Don Javier to his sister, "to spend a few days in peace". He then posed for a number of family photos with Sixte and Françoise Marie, made by a photographer of Actualidad Española and published later in the press. On 4 March Don Javier, accompanied by Sixte, Françoise Marie and a number of Spanish Traditionalists, visited a Paris notary to issue a declaration. Following a brief interview with a reporter from Actualidad Española, he withdrew to Granville. At the same time Carlos-Hugo, unaware of his father’s whereabouts, alerted the police, who found Don Javier in good shape the following day. On 5 March, and accompanied by Carlos-Hugo, he was placed in the Hôpital Americain de Neuilly. On 7 March he left the hospital accompanied by Cécile, allegedly to attend the morning mass. In fact, accompanied by Carlos-Hugo, he visited another notary to make another statement, then returned to the hospital, while his wife issued a declaration charging Carlos-Hugo with abduction. Transliteration of material published in Actualidad Española available here
^Canal 2000, p. 380; before her own death, the widow barred Carlos-Hugo, Marie-Thérèse, Cécile and Marie des Neiges from the Ligniéres castle (the castle of Bostz had already become a property of Françoise Marie and her husband) and banned them from attending her own funeral. García Riol 2015, p. 382
^Casals, Xavier (2005). Franco y los Borbones: la corona de España y sus pretendientes. España escrita. Barcelona: Planeta. ISBN978-84-08-06313-1.
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