Infante Gonzalo Of Spain

Gonzalo Manuel María Bernardo Narciso Alfonso Mauricio de Borbón y Battenberg was born on 24 October 1914 in Madrid, Spain. He was the youngest child of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg. Gonzalo was the youngest grandson of Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom.

His full name, Gonzalo Manuel María Bernardo Narciso Alfonso Mauricio, was chosen to honor his family heritage, including his uncle, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, who was killed in World War I shortly before Gonzalo's baptism. The prince was educated privately during his childhood. He inherited hemophilia from his maternal lineage, a condition that was not widely recognized in Spain at the time. Despite health issues associated with hemophilia, he participated actively in sports.

Gonzalo held military rank as a private in the Engineering Corps of the Spanish Army. In 1927, he was designated as the 1,166th Knight of the Spanish branch of the Order of the Golden Fleece.

In 1924, at the age of nine, Gonzalo participated in the inauguration of the Estadio Chamartín, the football stadium for Real Madrid, where he kicked the ball of honor and shouted "¡Hala Madrid!".

Following the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic, Gonzalo accompanied his mother into exile on 14 April 1931. He pursued studies in engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, setting aside original plans to study at the University of Madrid.

In August 1934, Gonzalo was on summer holiday with his family at the villa of Count Ladislaus de Hoyos in Pörtschach am Wörthersee, Austria. On the evening of 11 August, Gonzalo and his sister Infanta Beatriz were traveling from Klagenfurt to Pörtschach when their car collided with a wall near Krumpendorf, after Beatriz swerved to avoid a cyclist. While neither appeared severely injured immediately afterward, Gonzalo soon developed severe abdominal bleeding. Due to his hemophilia and resulting weak heart condition, surgery was not performed. Gonzalo died two days later, on 13 August 1934.

His body was initially buried in the graveyard at Pörtschach but was later reinterred in the Pantheon of the Princes in El Escorial, Spain.

Gonzalo's death was reported in contemporary newspapers such as The New York Times and The Times, with accounts of his funeral and condolences expressed from Spain and abroad.