In 1906 Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, married King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Alfonso gave Victoria Eugenie a grand diamond tiara to wear on their wedding day, which he had commissioned from the Spanish royal jewellers - Ansorena. The diamonds were set in platinum in the design of three Fleur-de-Lis, the symbol for his family – the House of Bourbon. Yet it wasn't all romance: their union was unpopular among anarchists in the increasingly politically unstable Spain and as they left their wedding ceremony a bunch of flowers was thrown at their carriage which concealed a bomb, killing and injuring over 100 people - leaving the new queen's wedding dress splattered with blood.
The anarchists eventually got what they wanted, and the royal couple were exiled in 1931, with the Crown not re-established until 1978. The latter was a fact that Queen Eugenie was clearly confident on, however, as she included a Joyas de Pasar (jewels that are passed on) in her 1963 Will and Final Testament, leaving instructions that a small group of her regal pieces never leave the family but are simply passed from monarch to monarch. The custodian of the tiara during this time had been Queen Eugenie’s daughter-in-law, the Countess of Barcelona, who had most notably worn it for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, but in 1978, as per Eugenie’s wishes, it was returned to the new Queen Sofia, wife of her grandson, Juan Carlos de Bourbon, who General Franco had named as his successor.
When King Juan Carlos I abdicated in 2014, his son Felipe and his wife, TV news journalist Letizia, were crowned as the new and current King and Queen of Spain. Once again Eugenie’s Joyas de Pasar was honoured and the tiara was passed to the new Queen. It was seen atop Letizia at Buckingham Palace in 2017 and to the Imperial Enthronement in Tokyo in 2019.
