EUGENIA DE MONTIJO, THE SPANISH EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH

Legend says that that Eugenia was born in the middle of an earthquake, and that she was brought up among bohemian, prostitutes, lenders, bandits, dukes and beggars. Eugenia was born in Granada, where she spent the first four years of her life, then moved with her family to Madrid.

Maria Eugenia was actually Baroness Countess of Teba and her older sister, Francisca de Sales, the real Countess of Montijo. Francisca was a brown-haired person whose sweet nature and spiritual calm contrasted with that of her sister, one-year younger, reddish hair, vivacious and confident. Both sisters were very beautiful. If the goal of the two daughters of Count de Montijo had been marrying well, they both got indeed. The eldest daughter married the Duke of Alba and the youngest became Empress of France.

After a few years, their mother Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick (of Scottish descent), decided to move with her children to Paris, alternating with brief stays in Madrid, England and Granada. By the way, it is said that Prosper Merimée wrote the famous opera “Carmen” based upon Manuela.

The Duke of Alba for some time was torn between Francisca and Eugenia, but finally settled on the first. It was written that Eugenia was so upset by the election, that she poisoned the milk diluted with matches to kill herself. It was her first love disappointment of her life and shortly after this disappointment would be followed by another, perhaps not so impetuous, but appeared to leave a deeper mark. Since then, in love relationships Eugenia ruled a coldness and prevention feeling. She was not going back to trust any man. Not even her future husband.

It seems that the meeting between Eugenia and Napoleon III was not casual. According to sources, they met through her mother, who wanted a good match for her two daughters. At 27 Eugenia had a reputation of being adventurous, ambitious and unscrupulous. The beauty of the young grenadine aristocrat enchanted the future emperor of France, Louis Napoleon.

It is said that Napoleon went crazy about Eugenia, who to inflame him, used a tactic as old as effective: to deny him her virginity. The courtship lasted two years.

In addition, if it is true the story that is told, the future emperor had to be stopped in their carnal cravings by young Andalusian. In one of the first meetings, he asked her where the way to her bedroom was and she replied him emphatically, but with her best smile: “through the Church”. Whether this story is or it is not certain, the situation would explain fully the moral behaviour of each of them. Louis Napoleon, after his marriage, kept public infidelities with several lovers, while Eugenia, quite a conservative Catholic, had close relations with Rome and financially protected several religious communities.

Although the desire for Eugenia was extinguished after a wedding night as wild as disappointing, Napoleon the Little, as Victor Hugo called him, was diagnosed by his doctor as "a tortured man in the flesh." They say that he slept with so many women who had to design for him a special chair to have sex.

He was unfaithful just right from the wedding trip, although it seems that it did not affect Eugenia  too much, since she did not love him. She married him only to be empress. And his love affairs suited her in order to let her to take active part in politics, giving ideas to turn Paris into the City of Light, supporting the establishment of an empire in Mexico, financing the opening of the Suez Canal, whose pomp on this occasion were very important, including representation for the first time on the banks of the Nile, Verdi's famous opera “Aida”.

She was the first woman to be granted with the Legion of Honour; in fact, she was the most decorated person in all France, with 20 medals and many titles.

She advocated for women's suffrage and humanistic ideas, but also invented the decorative style Napoleon III, discovered the great couturier Worth and dictated fashion for decades, devised crinoline, perfume, large mounted stones, necklaces.... She invented colours, furniture, food and makeup tried. Her dresses were imitated throughout Europe.

She was a great traveller who spoke several languages ​​and chatted with intellectuals and Gypsies. She was the first woman who went to a gym and learned boxing.

In addition, thanks to her, summers in Biarritz became very popular and the centre of European nobility. She and her husband built the palace on the beach now known as Hotel du Palais.

She had a rebellious, energetic and eccentric character, and also she was smart, intriguing, cocky and ambitious.

In 1879, her only son, the Prince Imperial, died in the war against the Zulus. Afterwards, Eugenia de Montijo, widowed and alone, lived in England, thought making frequent trips to Spain. On one of these trips, in 1920, at the age of 94 years, she died in Madrid. She was buried in the imperial crypt of the Abbey of Saint Michael in Farnborough (England), next to her husband and her son.

There is a story, told by Eugenia herself, which must have left her a deep shock. It happened in Granada, an evening that she went up to Sacromonte, some gypsies harassed her and several of her companions for  begging. One of the gypsies wanted to read the hand to her. Her nurse did not let her but she insisted by saying: "Although you don’t show me your hand, I know that this child will be more than a queen." These words were engraved in her mind.

And some years later, at a party in Paris, Abbe Boudinet, a renowned palm reader, insisted on reading the lines of Eugenia’s hand and then he said, amazed: "I saw in her right hand one imperial crown!".

An exciting life, not very happy, but very exciting, no doubt .......

Sources:

www.ctv.es

www.ideal.es

www.farodevigo.es

mujeresdeleyenda.blogspot.com

Book “Pasión Imperial”, written by Pilar Eyre

LOS MANOLOS SHOES OF MANOLO BLAHNIK DESIGNER

The shoe designer Manolo Blahnik (Santa Cruz de la Palma, Canary Islands, Spain 1942), has been recently awarded the National Prize Fashion Design 2012. Internationally renowned, Manolo Blahnik has used the last four decades in dress women's feet with his famous "Manolos" designs that sometimes reach eight inches heel.

Born to a Czech father and a Spanish mother and raised in the Canary Islands, Blahnik graduated from the University of Geneva in 1965 and studied art in Paris. He moved to London in 1968 to work at fashion boutique "Zapata" and wrote for Vogue Italia. After showing his portfolio of fashions and set designs to Diana Vreeland, she told him that he should design only footwear. In 1972, Ossie Clark invited him to create shoes for his runway show. With a loan of £2,000, Blahnik bought "Zapata" from its owner and opened his own boutique

Influenced by Visconti's films and paintings by El Greco, Goya, Velázquez and Zurbarán, Spanish designer has created more than 20,000 pairs of shoes following a traditional process in which he designs, shapes and finishes each of his shoes, who baptizes with the original names.

Manolos typically cost between 500 and 6000 euros. With 22,000  designed shoes, Blahnik has worked with heels of all heights and popularity of their models finished giving his own name to them and inventing some models, like the "kitten heel" (a heel of 3 cm).

In the 1970s,  Manolo Blahnik turned back his attention to the stiletto heel, which has remained the brand's mainstay to this day. Manolo Blahnik shoes have rapidly become a symbol of pure classical style for the 21st century.

Blahnik's boutiques are located in London, New York, Las Vegas, Dublin, Athens, Madrid, Istanbul, Dubai, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore and Stockholm.

Part of their success has to do with celebrities from film and music who love his shoes such as Madonna, who has come to describe them as "better than sex", since "last longer". Or such as  the actress Sarah Jessica Parker in the series "Sex and the City", who in one of its chapters and fully struggle with a burglar pleads " Take my Fendi bag, my ring and my watch, but please do not take my Manolo Blahniks". 

Also Los Manolos appear in a Lady Gaga song and in the "Twilight saga: Breaking Dawn" film, Bella Swam wears Manolo Blahnik shoes for her wedding. They appear as well in the bestseller “Fifty shades of Grey”. And Letizia Ortiz wore Manolos when she married Prince Philip. And among his many admirers are: Jessica Biel, Kathy Perry, Miranda Kerr, Jennifer Aniston, Rihanna, Katie Holmes, Blake Lively, Olivia Palermo and Victoria Beckham.

"Men tell me I've saved their marriages, it has cost them a fortune on shoes, but it's cheaper than a divorce, so it seems that I am still useful", the designer jokes .......

This prodigious shoemaker have accumulated numerous awards. Blahnik was elevated to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1987. He was awarded the honorary title of  Commander of the British Empire in 2007 for his service to the British fashion industry and was the first shoe designer who has exhibited his work at the Design Museum in London.

Blahnik currently lives in Bath, United Kingdom and was awarded an honorary degree from Bath Spa University in July 2012.

There is not any doubt Los Manolos are elegant, prestigious, beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful, amazing....... but........ I have only just one question ....…..are they also comfortable?

Source: 

El diario de Navarra

20 minutos

Wikipedia

ANITA DELGADO, THE SPANISH MAHARANI DE KAPURTHALA

This is the story which scandalised Spanish society, the real-life fairytale of the teenage flamenco dancer who married a prince began in Madrid in 1906 with the marriage of Alfonso XIII of Spain to Victoria Eugenie of Battenburg. She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and also the grandmother of the current King of Spain, Juan Carlos I.

An Indian Prince was amongst the British contingent attending the celebrations with the Prince of Wales and although he had a one hundred and twenty women harem (four leading women and the rest concubines) 34 years old Jagatjit Singh fell in love with 16 years old Anita, when he saw her dancing in the Café Kursal in Madrid. Jagatjit Singh, the Maharaja of Kapurthala, was captivated by the young teenager, but his attempts to win her over were at first rejected out of hand. He left for France after an assassination attempt was made on the royal couple, but continued his courtship from Paris. Anita finally agreed to marry him, and travelled to Paris, and was installed in a luxurious palace. She was not to meet the prince again until she had learnt French: she was also instructed in all the social niceties of the time, before travelling to Kapurthala for her marriage.

The couple married in January 1908, in a traditional Sikh wedding where the young girl from Málaga arrived for the ceremony on the back of an elephant. She took the name of Prem Kaur.

In fact, Ana Delgado was purchased. The huge sums of money received by her family, the luxurious gifts, fabulous jewelry,….. All that was just the beginning of a fascinating personal story and also full of contrasts. The Rani Prem Kaur of Kapurthala, as she was called after the wedding, lived surrounded by extraordinary wealth, servants, exquisite whims of glitter and oriental pomp beyond imagination, a universe, in short, magnificent and enviable. She felt left out for other women in the Kamra Palace, the former palace of Majaraha, and lived alone and full of nostalgia for her family and her country.

Anita Delgado spent the next 18 years of her life in Jagatjit Singh’s kingdom in the foothills of the Himalayas, as the Maharaja’s fifth wife and the Maharani of Kapurthala. The couple had one son, Ajit Singh. She lived a life of unbelievable luxury, showered with jewels, and travelling widely throughout India with her husband, as well as to Europe and the Americas, followed by crowds of paparazzi wherever they went. Her husband even built her a palace modelled on Versailles.

But, as the years passed by, the Maharaja started having affairs, and she, feeling neglected, started her own - with her stepson, the Maharaja's son with an older wife, and who was the same age as Delgado. His camp would rather paint a picture of an opportunistic social ladder climber, who lived a scandalously lavish life, and that it was her "misbehavin'" that drove the Maharaja to other women...

Anyway, the fairytale came to an end after a visit to London in 1924, when her husband heard that she had had an affair with one of her stepsons. The couple lived separately until their divorce in 1925, and Anita left India for good. The Maharaja allowed her to keep her title of Maharani and all the gifts she had received during their marriage, and gave her a life pension. She also kept her Indo-Punjabi nationality. Part of the agreement, however, was that she could never remarry and must never return to India. She took with her on her return to Europe all the skills of her life as a Maharani: how to play the piano, how to dance and conduct herself in high society. She was also able to speak fluent French and English by this time. The opulent lifestyle continued in Europe where the Maharani became involved in a secret relationship with her secretary, Gines Rodríguez Fernández de Segura, which endured for the rest of her life until her death in Madrid in 1962.


with her lover in Biarritz

 The Spanish actress, Penelope Cruz, bought the screen rights to the book, casting herself in the starring role alongside Bollywood co-stars in a silver-screen adaptation of Anita’s astonishing life story. The Maharaja’s descendants have been trying to block the project, describing it as a ‘scandalous portrayal’ of what really took place.

Like any respectable royal, she became a discerning collector of crazy-opulent jewelry. Delgado's favourite piece, as she always expressed, is this juggernaut of an emerald, shaped like a crescent, and flanked by swirls and cascades of diamonds (See below. And remember to breathe.).

with the jewell above

Invariably, most of her other pieces of jewelry were jaw-dropping opulent and many pieces were of designs influenced by the belle epoque and art-deco movements in Europe, and brought to life by the finest jewelry craftsmen in Punjab.

All these jewels belonging to Anita Delgado were sold in Christie's in London on December 12, 2007. Wow! She could afford it indeed, she was a maharani!!

Source:

http://www.riadbellepoque.com/

http://www.kapurthalaprincess.com/

http://www.mayaruhi.blogspot.com/

HEMINGWAY AND HIS LOVE FOR SPAIN: ERNEST DE LA MANCHA

having an ice-cream in Pamplona

Few people know that Hemingway spent his final birthday in Andalucia and that it was one of the last times he would be seen happy. Few foreigners ever have been so closely identified with Spain as is Ernest Hemingway. A Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winning novelist, essayist, and war correspondent, Hemingway was able to capture the many complexities of Spain in a way that enchanted the world. His relationship to Spain was more than that of the casual tourist or even of the detached observer, Hemingway wholeheartedly celebrated all that was Spanish culture and lifestyle.

Nicknamed “Papa” by all those who knew him well, Ernest Miller Hemingway was never one to watch life pass him by; he lived it to the fullest. Born near Chicago on 21 July, 1899, much of his early years were spent in the outdoors fishing and hunting with his father, something that would remain central to his character during his life. Legendary drinker and conqueror of women, although it has to be said that indeed he had four wives, it was they who always conquered him and who dragged him to the marriage and curiously, he never married women whom truly he loved, which indicates this degree of shyness and insecurity that dominated him, even with women (apparently, he had not too a happy childhood with an overbearing mother and a weak father who also committed suicide).

And even though it is true he was an alcoholic, the reality is that his external image of arrogance hid indeed a great spiritual emptiness, a great insecurity and above all, hid his fear of death (Hemingway was unable to sleep with the lights off). It was him who said: "The courage is not more than a headlong rush."

When Hemingway traveled to Spain it was just like if you would go to your own home, for Spain was for him more than a friendly country, was the place that served him as inspiration, enlightenment and even purification. He liked the individualistic nature and the natural rebelliousness of the Spaniards, he liked the sarcasm and wisdom of the language of the people. And although he had fondness and admiration for other European countries like France and Italy, his true and emotional choice, even mystical attraction had always been to Spain, "the country he loved after his", as he always said and wrote.

with friends in Pamplona

Since very little you could see his love of Spain, when he was at the school he conducted a school newspaper, publishing numerous articles with the name of “Ernest de la Mancha” (Don Quijote de la Mancha was the famous book written by Miguel de Cervantes).

In 1920, he moved to Toronto, Canada and started his first writing job with The Toronto Star, finally becoming their foreign correspondent. He then moved to Paris with his first wife, Hadley Richardson, joining a loosely-affiliated group of American expatriates that collectively became known as The Lost Generation. It was here that he met the writers John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. It was Stein who convinced him to turn his back on journalism and devote his talents to fiction and in fact, he first travelled to Spain in 1923 to experience bullfighting, acting on the advice of Gertrude Stein. He published The Sun Also Rises in 1926, which became a best-seller, ensuring his financial freedom for the rest of his life.

Hemingway returned to Spain many times just to watch numerous corridas (bullfights). However, in 1937 he returned as a correspondent to cover the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway was a staunch supporter of the Republican troops during the war and often put himself in danger doing what he could to support his side. These Spanish experiences served as the fodder for numerous short stories and also for the novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was published in 1940. During his coverage of the war, he traveled with a fellow reporter named Martha Gellhorn. The two had first met in Key West and became close during their time in Spain. The two would later marry in 1940, after Hemingway’s second marriage with Pauline ended. Precisely there is a film about to be made, relating the fascinating story about the trip to Spain by Ernest Heminway and Martha Gellhorn during the Spanish Civil War. Starring British actor Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman, which will recount the tempestuous romance between writer Hemingway and celebrated war correspondent Gellhorn, who, by the way, was the only woman ever to ask Hemingway for a divorce. (The film, entitled “Hemingway & Gellhorn”, will be produced by James Gandolfini and is due to be released next year).

with 3rd wife Martha Gellhorn

with 4th wife Mary Welsh

When in 1939 the Republican side lost the civil war he left Spain again, like any other exiled, not returning to this country in fifteen years. He had promised not to return as a Republican fighter would be in jail and so he did.

But why he was so attracted to bullfighting, of which he became a great connoisseur? According to his friend and biographer Jose Luis Castillo-Puche, not because of the morbidity and violence of the spectacle in itself, but by the feeling of immortality of the bullfighter experience in the middle of a chore.

Hemingway developed a especial fondness for two Spanish cities: Pamplona and Madrid. In fact, the last one came to be called in one of his stories "capital of the world", such was his love for the city. And when he was here he moved between the Museo del Prado, Santa Ana Square, in the Cerveceria Alemana (German Bar, a meeting place for bullfighters) and the Beef Restaurant Alley (not open any more) where he ate daily Spanish dishes with Navarre wine.

in Madrid

In Madrid, he loved to escape through the back door of the Hotel Suecia, where he used to stay, to sneak journalists awaiting him, and went to visit the Museo del Prado, dragged by Goya painting. He loved the characteristics of Madrileña people, their sense of honor, sympathy, individualism, citizenship and also their love of freedom ...

In 1952 he published what would be the great jewel of his work "The Old Man and the Sea". 1953 he was awarded with Pulitzer Prize and returned to Spain after 15 years away. And in 1954 he was awarded with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Poolside at La Consula, Malaga, Spain,

the morning of his 60th birthday, 1959

1959 would be his great year in Spain, the year of "The dangerous summer," a series of reports that he would write for Life magazine, about the rivalry in the sand of the two great bullfighters of that moment: Antonio Ordonez and Luis Miguel Dominguin, but at the same time, this also would be the coup the grace for his health, physically and mentally, because during that summer he would travel with the two bullfighters to the major bullrings, giving himself to all the excesses (in spite of his doctor's recommendations, because of his already fragile health) . In 1960, his mental and physical problems got worse and he left Spain for the last time and shortly after he was admitted to the May Clinic in Minnesota under his doctor’s name to keep his illness to be secret, he was already a destroyed man.

with bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin

And in 1961, after two failed suicide attempts and several entrances and exits of the May Clinic in the morning of July 2 (and having bought tickets to go to the San Fermin festival of that year) he shooted in the mouth with his dearest rifle and on July 7th (just when Sanfermines bullfighting was starting) he was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Ketchum. On July 11 it would be held in the church of San Fermin a Mass for his eternal rest, wich was attended by all his good Spanish friends and a good American friend of him and also great lover of Spain, Orson Welles.

That day died one of the undisputed icons of 20th-century literature.

SOURCES:

“Hemingway entre la vida y la muerte”,
written by Jose Luis Castillo-Puche
http://www.ernesthemingwaycollection.com/
http://www.independent.co.uk/
http://www.andalucia.com/