The Spanish Duchess of Alba, whose profusion of noble titles, wealth and flair made her the subject of fascination in Spain and beyond, particularly after her recent marriage to a commoner 24 years her junior, died Nov. 19 at her Duenas palace in Seville. She was 88.
The cause was pneumonia, a palace spokesman said.
Known as Cayetana — short for Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva — the duchess was among the most intriguing and unorthodox members of Europe’s noble class.
Her unruly hair and unusual taste in fashion made her immediately recognizable in the tabloids, which in recent years chronicled her social comings and goings and, in 2011, her nuptials with civil servant Alfonso Diez Carabantes. On that occasion, she entertained onlookers by lifting her hemline and launching into the flamenco.
Born into the centuries-old aristocratic family known as the House of Alba, she was a duchess, countess and marchioness many times over — so many times over, it was reported, that she possessed more recognized noble and hereditary titles than any other grandee.
“There are so many titles — at least 57 of them, you see — so I only use Alba,” the duchess remarked to the New York Times in 1966, when former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy was preparing to pay her a visit.
Among the duchess’ privileges was the right to ride a horse into Seville’s cathedral. By virtue of her rank, she was absolved of the obligation to kneel before the pope. Some technicians of court procedure questioned, hypothetically, whether she would be required to bow before Queen Elizabeth II of England, or vice versa.
The family patrimony included palaces and mansions across Spain. She held a first-edition copy of Miguel de Cervantes’ 17th-century masterwork “Don Quixote,” relics from explorer Christopher Columbus and an art collection that included paintings by Peter Paul Rubens, Diego Velazquez, Rembrandt and Francisco de Goya.
Pablo Picasso, the modern Spanish master, was said to have invited the duchess to pose for him as a model, but she declined.
“I think he would have worn me out,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying.
Estimates of her wealth ranged from the hundreds of millions to $5 billion. More precise figures were difficult to obtain, in part because much of her fortune existed in the form of real estate and art.
She was an enthusiast of bullfights and horses. In matters of fashion, she favored clothing described in the English media as “bohemian,” as well as anklets.
By 2011, as she prepared to marry Diez, the duchess was 85 and had been widowed twice. Skeptics, including some of her children, questioned her fiance’s intentions.
Diez publicly renounced any claims to her fortune, and the duchess pre-emptively divvied her wealth between her children and grandchildren.
The duchess, an only child, was born March 28, 1926, in the Liria palace of Madrid. She was said to have been a distant relative of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Diana, Princess of Wales.
After the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Generalissimo Francisco Franco named her father, the duke of Alba, ambassador to England. There, his daughter counted the future Queen Elizabeth II among her playmates. The duke resigned his ambassadorship in 1945, declaring that Franco was “harmful to the interests of Spain.”
His daughter had made her debut in 1943. Four years later, she married Luis Martinez de Irujo y Artazcoz, son of the duke of Sotomayor.
In 1978, six years after her first husband’s death, the duchess married Jesus Aguirre y Ortiz de Zarate, a former Jesuit priest who worked with a publishing house. That marriage, which surprised many Spaniards, ended with his death in 2001.
Besides her third husband, the duchess’ survivors include six children and many grandchildren.
— Washington Post
H. Stonecipher, 76, insurance pioneer
Harland Stonecipher, an insurance salesman whose legal problems after a head-on car crash prompted him to pioneer a new way for people to insure against future legal costs, died Nov. 10 in Ada, Okla. He was 76.
John Long, a spokesman for LegalShield, the successor to the company Stonecipher founded, Pre-Paid Legal Services, said the death at a hospital in Ada, where Stonecipher lived, was heart-related.
Stonecipher’s innovation was to allow people to pay monthly premiums for help with legal matters — from divorce to warranty disputes, from arrests to identity theft — in the manner of health insurance. He also built an army of sales employees, once numbering more than 200,000, to sell the policies.
It began in 1969, when Stonecipher was involved in a car accident that was not his fault.
“I had insurance that paid for my totaled car, insurance that took care of my medical bills,” he said recently, “but I was sued by the other party and had no money for legal fees.”
He ended up settling the lawsuit, but his difficulty in scraping together legal fees inspired an idea to fill a little-noticed market niche: Why not offer a plan for people to make small monthly payments so they could have access to legal advice when they needed it?
Stonecipher started what he called a “motor service club” to reimburse members for legal expenses.
The club became Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc., the first prepaid legal plan in the United States to cater to individuals.
Pre-Paid aimed to attract customers not poor enough to qualify for government-subsidized legal aid and not wealthy enough to retain a lawyer — “middle-income, hardworking Americans” who had been left out, as Stonecipher put it.
Today, more than 1.4 million American families representing 3.7 million people in 49 states are members of Pre-Paid’s successor company, paying as little as $20 a month, with fees rising if more services are desired.
On its website, the American Bar Association summarized the usefulness of such plans: “With one phone call, your lawyer can draft a will for you, look over a purchase contract on a home, represent your teenager in traffic court, negotiate a ‘life contract’ for nursing home care, and even get you a divorce!”
Pre-Paid was sold for $650 million to MidOcean Partners, a private equity firm, in 2011, and renamed LegalShield. Stonecipher made $54.2 million on his own shares. His team continued to manage its operations.
Harland Cecil Stonecipher was born in Ashland, Okla., on June 4, 1938. His sharecropping family was so poor, he said, that its only running water was water he ran outside to get. He majored in education and English at East Central State College.
One of Stonecipher’s more ingenious ideas was a card that a Pre-Paid member could buy for an extra dollar a month. An arrested person could use the card to show the police that he had legal representation. The card had a toll-free number on it.
The card is now included in all LegalShield policies.
— New York Times
