Javier de Borbón-Parma

Francisco Javier de Borbón-Parma y Braganza (Villa Borbón del Pianore, May 25, 1889 - Chur, May 7, 1977), was a Catholic and European prince of the House of Bourbon -Parma. Between 1936 and 1975 he was a claimant of Spanish Carlism, initially with the title of Regent, and from 1952 with that of King (Javier I ). He was also Duke of Parma and Plasencia between 1974 and 1977.

Biography

Early years

He was born in Villa Pianore, near Viareggio (province of Lucca, region of Tuscany), in Italy, on May 25, 1889. He was the second son of the second marriage of Robert of Bourbon-Parma and Bourbon, infant of Spain and Duke of Parma, and the Infanta María Antonia de Braganza. He was a first cousin of the Carlist claimant Jaime. His maternal grandparents were King Michael I of Portugal and Princess Adelaide of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg.

Five days after his birth, he was baptized by the archbishop of Lucca, and the name Javier was given to him in memory of the patron saint of Navarre at the wish of his father, who had fought in the Third Carlist War. His baptism was attended by the wife of the then Carlist claimant to the throne, Charles of Bourbon and Austria-Este, and his son Jaime (who upon the death of his father would become the claimant James III). His baptismal godfather was Charles himself, represented by his son, Prince James, who held his cousin at the baptismal font.

He spent his childhood on the family's possessions in Italy and Austria. At the age of eight she entered the boarding school 'Stella Matutina'. from Feldkirch with his brother Sixto, three years older than him. He completed his university studies in Paris, where he obtained the title of agricultural engineer and a degree in Political Science, finishing his studies in 1914.

First World War

He participated in World War I as an artillery officer in the Belgian army, and fought on the Belgian, French and English fronts. He and his brother Sixtus intercede, at the request of the then Pope Benedict XV, to try to achieve a separate peace between the Austro-Hungarian Empire (whose empress, Zita, was his sister) and the allies, without success.

Spanish civil war

Javier actively participated in the preparations for the insurrection that began the Spanish civil war, presiding over a supreme military junta that provided a large number of weapons to the rebels. After the victory of the Popular Front in the February 1936 elections, he established contact with generals José Sanjurjo and Emilio Mola. Following the instructions of Alfonso Carlos de Borbón, leader of the Traditionalist Communion, he agreed in an interview with Sanjurjo in Lisbon to defer the resolution of the return to the traditional and legitimate Monarchy until the termination of the Movement in which they were committed.

He authorized the requetés militias, by means of an order signed on July 14 in San Juan de Luz, to join the uprising, to whose victory in Navarra they contributed decisively. On August 5, he was named Major General of the Royal Army by Alfonso Carlos, who died on September 28, 1936 as a result of injuries suffered after being run over by a truck in Vienna. Javier presided over his burial and swore, before his corpse, as the new leader of the Traditionalist Communion with the title of regent. He kept Manuel Fal Conde as traditionalist chief delegate, who would act on his behalf until 1955.

In a statement to a journalist in Saint Jean de Luz, he dedicated complimentary comments to the figure of General Franco and the Spanish Army and denied that the participation of the Carlists was conditional on a restoration of the traditional monarchy that they advocated, stating:

When General Sanjurjo arranged with my late uncle the participation of the Carlists in the movement that was being prepared, the agreement was reached that while the war lasted and until Spain did not ask for it, that restoration would not come. I repeat that myself. First and foremost, to fight for Spain and only for Spain; when Spain is saved, if the people ask for it, it will be time to think about the restoration.
For now, and for a few years, a strong military government that puts Spain at the height it deserves, and then, if the people believe that we are the solution, we will serve Spain with all loyalty from the Throne.

After Fal Conde's exile from Spain in December 1936, Javier de Borbón-Parma wrote an extensive letter to the Carlist National War Board, asking them to remain silent regarding the exile of their president, "to avoid all responsibility in "those damages and avoid any aggravation of them." In this letter he recognized that the Carlist leaders pursued no other goal "than that of greater efficiency in the service of Spain and in their collaboration with the Army" and praised Fal Conde as "the man who suffered persecutions, prisons, and confiscation of property during the Republic, and that not content with this, always understood that only military preparation and organization of the Communion, together with an action by the healthy part of the Army, could save Spain.

During the time of the Spanish civil war, Javier entered Spain twice: the first, on May 17, 1937, he visited his brother Cayetano, enlisted in the Requetés militias under the name of Gaetán de Lavardín and wounded in the fighting around Bilbao during the Northern campaign. He also paid a visit to the requetés at the front during the exile of Manuel Fal Conde. After that, the Carlist prince met with Francisco Franco, when he explained to him the reasons for his discrepancies with the Unification decree and with the resistance of the Carlists to the construction of the new regime. Two days after the meeting, Javier de Borbón-Parma received a letter urging him to leave Spanish territory within twenty-four hours.

In November 1937 he entered Spain again to declare expelled from the Carlist communion all those who had accepted positions in the regime without their consent, after the Unification decree of 1937, which merged into a single political party, FET and the JONS, to traditionalists and Falangists, and to meet personally with Franco to protest said decree. He visited the Northern Front and Andalusia (Jerez, Seville and Granada). It was in the city of the Alhambra where he received the order to leave Spain, a decision for which he would again personally protest to Franco. He went to Portugal, first, and then to France, taking up residence in Bostz Castle in 1938. After the end of the civil war, the paradox arose that Carlism, the political faction that had led to the Uprising, was persecuted and harassed. by the new regime (expropriation of property, premises and newspapers).

World War II

As he did in World War I, he enlisted in the Belgian Army as an artillery colonel after the Nazi invasion of the country and carried out negotiations between King Leopold III and French President Paul Reynaud, while his brother Renato He volunteered to fight in the Finnish Army against the Soviet invaders during the Winter War.

After the German conquest of France, he moved to Saint Jean de Luz, staying there for ten days and, once the Germans arrived there, he went to Pau, from where he tried to cross into Spain, but was denied passage. He then escaped to the area run by Marshal Pétain's collaborationist regime, known as Vichy France. There he participated in a secret mission between the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, and the French Minister of Public Instruction, Jacques Chevalier, to try to prevent the possible German occupation of Vichy France.

In relation to Spanish politics, in July 1941 he published a manifesto in which he proposed the Regency as a formula for peaceful transition from the military dictatorship to the traditional monarchy. Among the objectives that the Regency had to carry out would be the preparation and convening of truly representative Cortes and the designation of the prince with the best right who should occupy the throne.

Don Javier participated in the French Resistance, first hiding anti-Nazi fugitives in the woods of his castle and, later, personally leading a maquis of about a hundred partisans in the Allier region. He is arrested on July 22, 1944 by the Nazis and taken to Vichy. He spent a month in the Gestapo prison there. There, he was sentenced to death accused of being a "terrorist, communist and English agent." Marshal Philippe Pétain himself interceded for him, after receiving a visit from Javier's wife, and he was transferred to the ordinary military jurisdiction, being transferred from Vichy to the Clermont-Ferrand prison, first, and to the Natzweiler extermination camp, in Alsace, later. He would be there until the advance of the Allies caused the evacuation of the camp and the transfer to Dachau. There, after being presumed dead by a German doctor, a trephination was performed on him without anesthesia by a Jewish doctor to cure him of acute mastoiditis. He was again evacuated from Dachau before the advance of the Allies and transferred to Prax, in Tyrol. He would finally be freed by American troops from Italy on May 8, 1945, just as World War II ended on European soil.

Opposition to Francoism

As supreme leader of Carlism, on June 26, 1950 he swore the Basque privileges on the tree of Guernica. A year later, in December 1951, he swore in the Catalans in Montserrat. In May 1952, after being persuaded of the need to be named king by the National Council of the Traditionalist Communion, he agreed to conclude the sixteen years of regency by being proclaimed king of Spain in Barcelona during the XXXV International Eucharistic Congress. Shortly afterward he was expelled from Spain.

The attitude of the Franco regime in those times towards the Carlist followers of Javier, led by their chief delegate, Manuel Fal Conde, was one of persecution and contempt. Located to the right of the regime, which they considered "totalitarian" and "socializing", for two decades they maintained their opposition to the Unification decree and a strong political and religious intransigence, coming to be described by General Franco, in statements to the newspaper Up in 1955, as "a tiny group of fundamentalist followers of a foreign prince, separated from the first hour of the Movement."

Collaboration with the Franco regime

That same year, 1955, Javier changed his strategy regarding the Franco regime, leaving aside his position of confrontation with it. To do this, he dismissed Fal Conde and appointed a board chaired by José María Valiente, who carried out a policy of collaboration with the regime until 1967. Despite having declared himself legitimate king of Spain in 1952, in the following years he showed hesitation in relation to the regime. with that claim, which he came to consider to have been premature. On January 17, 1956, before the National Council of the Traditionalist Communion, he defined himself as the mere repository of Carlist legitimacy and explained the advantages of the collaborationist policy, in order to achieve the evolution of the regime towards the traditional monarchy advocated by Carlism. Javier, more interested in the triumph of traditionalism than in the rights that he himself might have to the crown, even raised the possibility that Juan Carlos, the son of Juan de Borbón, could become a traditionalist king. However, due to pressure from his advisors, Javier was forced to read a note written by Rafael Gambra reflecting the unanimous opinion of rejection of Juan and ratifying the Barcelona commitment of 1952.

Faced with the draft law on freedom of worship by Foreign Minister Fernando María Castiella announced in 1962, and in the face of the new modernist trends within the Church that promoted the principle of freedom of worship at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council In May 1963, Javier had a manifesto drawn up in his name in defense of the "Catholic Unity of Spain", signed by the chief delegate José María Valiente and the regional heads.

From the Traditionalist Communion to the Carlist Party

However, the final acceptance by the Church of the principle of freedom of worship and other progressive ideas that until then had been contrary to Catholic doctrine, would facilitate the Political Secretariat of Carlos Hugo - who promoted doctrinal changes in Carlism in a progressive sense— to gain weight in the direction of the Traditionalist Communion. In this way, in April 1965, a new Technical Secretariat was created, with high decision-making power at the top of Carlism, made up of the secretaries of Carlos Hugo and chaired by José María de Zavala, which made the Carlists dissatisfied with the subsequent change. ideologically they called it a "coup d'état of the secretaries."

Due to the new tone of the Carlist statements, in October of the following year Javier acknowledged that he had received many letters from different Spanish provinces from Carlist leaders, his friends, former requetés and young people dissatisfied with the actions of the Technical Secretariat that he directed. Zavala under the auspices of Prince Carlos Hugo, whom they even accused of being a traitor. Javier would deny ill will on the part of the Secretariat, although he stated that there was "a long European conspiracy to undo Carlism with lies and slander" to benefit in Spain to the "progressives, reds and communists" and that documents attributed to their authorship had been falsified. In December 1966 the suitor expressed concern about the reactions in Spain and Europe after the Second Vatican Council and stated that there had spent "a very painful and painful year, defending the truth, and doing everything possible to calm our people and our enemies." In Javier's opinion, the meaning of the word aggiornamento pronounced by Pope John XXIII had been misinterpreted, which would mean "postponement" and "not updated".

On May 10, 1967, Carlos Hugo's secretaries stated that they were abandoning Carlism, due to their "identification with anti-democratic elements" and the "censorship of post-conciliar thought." That year Carlos Hugo once again claimed the validity of the beginning of July 18. In an event held in Fátima (Portugal) on December 8, 1967, Javier granted the title of "Duke of Quintillo" to Manuel Fal Conde. It was the only noble title that he granted as head of the Carlist dynasty.

On December 26, 1968, the Carlist royal family was expelled from Spain again, under the pretext that "they fail to comply with the provisions that regulate the residence of foreigners in Spain." Shortly after, Juan Carlos de Borbón was designated Franco's successor as king. This meant the abrupt abandonment of the strategy that consisted of swinging between the opposition and collaboration with the Franco regime, and leftist rhetoric was resumed within the Traditionalist Communion.

After suffering a serious traffic accident, in February 1972 Javier granted full powers to his first-born son, Carlos Hugo, to lead the new Carlist Party, which rejected Carlist traditionalism and advocated self-managed socialist ideology. During those years, various leftist manifestos appeared in Javier's name, which some traditionalist sectors denied were attributable to their king. In the midst of growing discontent, in 1973 the Valencian Carlists of the Círculo Aparisi y Guijarro stated in their newsletter that those concepts were dissonant with the classic style, vocabulary and thought of Javier, and that the new leadership of the party was taking advantage of the loyalty of the Carlists towards their old king "to sneak prefabricated ideological patterns into consciences."

According to Ramón María Rodón, in the 1970s Javier was already very weakened physically and mentally, which is why his first-born son and his daughters María Teresa, Cecilia and María de las Nieves "managed and exploited him very much." ease", making him sign documents whose content he did not know.

On April 6, 1975, various traditionalists dissatisfied with the policy developed by the Carlist Party met in Madrid and decided to write a collective letter of protest to Javier. But before the letter was sent, the news of Javier's abdication occurred in that of his son Carlos Hugo, which took place on April 20. However, the letter was sent anyway, with acknowledgment of receipt dated April 28. There was no response from Javier to this letter. Later, on September 22, his son Sixto Enrique appeared on the scene, who refused to remain loyal to his brother Carlos Hugo, considering that he had abandoned the basic principles of Carlism..

In the last years of his life, the political dispute between his sons Carlos Hugo and Sixto Enrique caused him great concern. On the occasion of the so-called Montejurra Events in 1976, he wrote to his sister Enriqueta that they had great difficulties in Spain where "the Carlists have confronted the revolutionaries and we have had deaths and injuries."

Reaffirmation of traditionalism and death

In his last interview, given to Alfredo Amestoy in La Actualidad Española on March 4, 1977 (which included photographs of it), Javier was shown with his son Sixto Enrique and reaffirmed the traditional Carlist thought, expressly condemning "Marxism and separatism" in a manifesto. Carlos Hugo then denounced that Sixto had kidnapped his father, which was officially denied by Javier's personal secretary, who described the complaint as "a casualty." political maneuver" because the head of the Carlist House had refused to support "certain initiatives whose Marxist or socialist content is contrary to the ideals of Carlism." According to his secretary, this complaint caused Javier to have to be hospitalized, greatly affected by the scandal generated.

Shortly after, another political manifesto appeared with his signature, contradictory to the previous one. Javier's wife, Magadalena de Borbón-Busset, then published a statement stating that Sixto had not kidnapped his father and that, instead, His children Cecilia and Carlos Hugo had taken him from the hospital where he was admitted, against the doctors' instructions, to take him before an unknown notary and force him to make a statement in favor of Carlos Hugo and "contrary to authentic Traditionalism."

Javier de Borbón Parma died shortly after these events, on May 7, 1977, at his Swiss residence in Chur, at the age of 87. His coffin was covered with a Spanish flag and a red beret. After the family funeral, her mortal remains were buried in the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes. Magdalena blamed her husband's death on her son Carlos Hugo and three other of her daughters, disowning them.

Published works

• Les accords secrets franco-anglais de décembre 1940. Paris: Plon, 1949.
• Les chevaliers du Saint-Sépulcre. Paris: A. Fayard, 1957.

Marriage and offspring

On November 12, 1927, he married María Magdalena de Borbón-Busset (1897-1984), daughter of Jorge Luis de Borbón Busset, count of Lignières (1860-1932), and María Juana de Kerret de Quillien (1866-1958). Jaime de Borbón y Borbón-Parma (for the Carlists, legitimate king of Spain and head of the House of Bourbon at that time) gave his license and full approval to the marriage. However, his brother Elías, Duke of Parma, whom had taken to the French courts for a part of her father's inheritance, refused to recognize their marriage and declared it morganatic, since Mary Magdalene did not belong to a reigning or formerly reigning royal family, nor to a mediatized family, but that belonged to an alleged bastard and non-dynastic branch of the House of Bourbon and was contrary to the customs of marriages between equals of the House of Bourbon and the laws dictated in the Pragmatic Sanction of 1776 applicable in both Spain and Parma. Prince Elias remained in his position until his death in 1959. After Elias's death, the marriage was recognized as dynastic by Robert II of Parma, son of Elias and nephew of Francis Xavier, who was already 50 years old and unmarried. Francisco Javier and Magdalena had six children:

• Francisca Maria (n. August 19, 1928).
• Carlos Hugo (8 April 1930 - 18 August 2010).
• María Teresa (28 July 1933 - 26 March 2020).
• Cecilia María (12 April 1935 - 1 September 2021).
• María de las Nieves (n. April 29, 1937).
• Sixto Enrique (n. July 22, 1940).

Ancestors

Predecessor: Alfonso Carlos I	Carlist Pretendant to the throne of Spain (up to 1952 as regent) 1936-1975	Successor: Carlos Hugo I - Regency of Sixto Enrique
Predecessor: Roberto II de Parma	Duke of Parma, Guastalla and Plasencia 1974-1975	Successor: Carlos IV de Parma