Luis González-Bravo y López de Arjona

Luis González-Bravo

Luis González Bravo y López de Arjona (Cádiz, Spain, 8 July 1811 – Biarritz, France, 1 September 1871) was a Spanish politician, diplomat, intellectual, speaker, author, philanthropist and journalist graduated from law school, who served twice as Prime Minister of Spain, or President of the Government of Spain (Spanish terminology for Prime Minister), from 1843 to 1844 and in 1868. He held other important offices, such as once serving as Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, and twice as Minister of Home Affairs (see: List of Ministers of the Interior of Spain). He was appointed Ambassador of Spain to the United Kingdom in Queen Victoria's rule, and Ambassador of Spain to Portugal. He was the Spanish Prime Minister responsible for granting Chile its independence. He was a member of the Moderate Party, and occupied three times the post of Spanish Congressman (United States House of Representatives equivalent) or Member of Parliament (House of Commons of the United Kingdom equivalent), for Cádiz, Jaén, and the Canary Islands. He was provisional Minister of Justice for five days. He was head of the Spanish civil troops "Milicia Nacional". He was Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece and Knight of the Order of Charles III (of King Charles III of Spain, Carlos III). He founded four newspapers in Spain, and was the noted Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's benefactor.

Independence of Chile and Chile Peace Treaty

Chile and Spain Independence and Peace Treaty, 1844

On 25 April 1844, as Prime Minister of Spain and Minister of State and Foreign Affairs simultaneously, President Luis González Bravo, together with Queen Isabella II of Spain made the peace negotiations and Treaty to recognise the Spanish American Independence of Chile as a country, for its official recognition by the Spanish Kingdom, called the Tratado de Paz y Amistad, in the government of President of Chile Manuel Bulnes. The signing plenipotentiaries were Luis González Bravo for Spain, and General José Manuel Borgoño for Chile. It was the first Latin American independence peace treaty signed in Queen Isabella II's government since her proclamation of accession to the throne.

Revolution and Exile

President Luis González Bravo was the first stable Prime Minister or President of the Government of Queen of Spain Isabella II of Bourbon's effective kingdom as of her coronation in 1843, and also her kingdom's last Prime Minister or President of the Government, 25 years later in 1868. Prime Minister Luis González Bravo was one of the few politicians who remained consistently faithful to Queen Isabella II throughout her ruling years, standing by her from the beginning of her effective monarchy, to the very last days of her reign in 1868. In September 1868, however, upon facing the first battle of the revolution, he advised Queen Isabella II to substitute him in the country's presidency for an experienced army general as Prime Minister, to better fight the ready to strike armed forces organized against her government. The Queen named Captain José Gutiérrez de la Concha as Prime Minister of Spain, who only lasted eleven days in power, from 19 September to 30 September 1868, his troops being defeated on 28 September, when the revolution took over the country. Queen Isabella II and Prime Minister González Bravo were offered exile with their spouses and children in France by Emperor Napoleon III. The Queen was exiled in Paris, where she died in 1904. Luis González Bravo lived in Biarritz with his wife and two daughters, and died there from coronary heart disease in 1871. In France, as a last resort to rescue and preserve the Bourbon monarchy in Spain in face of the revolutionary takeover and Queen Isabella II of Bourbon's exile, he supported the Carlists two years before his death. Months later, in 1870, Queen Isabella II abdicated her crown in favour of her first son King Alfonso XII of Spain, so as to perpetuate the House of Bourbon dynasty in Spain, which came back into power in 1874 with him leading the Spanish Monarchy Restoration.

Works, Journalism and Intellectual Academies

Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, painted by his brother, Valeriano Bécquer

A talented and prolific columnist, Luis González Bravo founded four newspapers in Spain: El Guirigay (1837), La Legalidad, El Contemporáneo (1860) and Los Tiempos. He was also columnist for the newspapers El Español and El Eco del Comercio. A fervent and generous literature supporter and philanthropist, he was legendary Spanish poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's patron, sponsor and benefactor. He also supported his brother actively, painter Valeriano Bécquer.

In his youth he was the playwright of the play Intrigar para morir (To Intrigue to Die). In 1835 he and Eugenio Moreno wrote the historical novel in four volumes Ramir Sanchez de Guzman, Año de 1072. He was a member of the Ateneo de Madrid (Athenæum of Madrid) since its foundation, and member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. He became a "C seat" Member of the Real Academia Española de la Lengua (Royal Academy of the Spanish Language) in 1863. Luis González Bravo is considered one of the best Spanish public speakers and orators of all time.

Romance and Son with Queen Isabella II of Spain: Prince Cipriano de Borbón y González Bravo

Isabella II of Bourbon, Queen of Spain, in her youth

Prime Minister Luis González Bravo and Queen Isabella II worked and collaborated politically from the beginning to the very end of Isabella's reign. Together they had one only son, Prince Cyprian of Bourbon González-Bravo (in Spanish: Infante Cipriano de Borbón y González Bravo). In Spanish history, he is the only child to have ever been born of a Queen and a Prime Minister of Spain (President in Spanish). Prince Cipriano was brother of King of Spain Alfonso XII de Borbón (of Bourbon). He was born in León, North Spain, on 15 September 1858, just after the birth of his maternal half-brother Alfonso XII. Prime Minister Luis González Bravo insisted on keeping Prince Cipriano out of court, to give his son his surname and have direct, free access to him at all times, as opposed to the domestic situation and official naming of Prince Cipriano's other uterine half-siblings (many died upon birth or prematurely).

The other children of Queen Isabella II officially carried her surname "of Bourbon" (de Borbón), coupled with the surname of her homosexual husband, also "of Bourbon", who as recorded by reliable historians, because of his hormonal condition and health problems was father to none of Queen Isabella's children, all illegitimate just like Prince Cipriano, on their respective fathers' sides. Because Queen Isabella II had to marry her gay cousin for strategic political reasons, she was forced to bravely seek the perpetuation of her family's royal bloodline succession outside her marriage, in order to preserve her Bourbon dynasty's furtherance. For this, she was unfairly misjudged and labelled as unfaithful and religiously promiscuous, by both misinformed and chauvinistic historians, and her revolutionary enemies. These politicians wanted to take over her monarchy, profiting from her situation to ruin her reputation with slander and smear campaigns, when actually she had no other choice as a monarch, since her own next generation of monarchic descendants had to endure into posterity, and she was the only Bourbon of her generation responsible for ensuring such biological succession to the throne, an impossible task to achieve with a gay husband.

Prince Cipriano de Borbón y González Bravo was put in a seminar in Asturias, North Spain, for him to pursue a career in the Roman Catholic Church, as decided by his parents. At the outbreak of the 1868 Spanish Revolution which overthrew Isabella II's monarchy and Luis González Bravo's presidency, on his parents' orders who feared for his safety and harm from their victorious revolutionary enemies, the almost eleven-year-old Cipriano was safely exiled and embarked on a ship to Mexico with his priest tutor, to join a convent in Mexico until the dust of danger in Spain settled so he could be brought back home close to his parents. In his time, Prince Cipriano de Borbón y González Bravo was the most representative Spaniard in exile, being the son of both the Queen and the Prime Minister of Spain. He is the only royal Bourbon in history, to have ever been exiled in Mexico and all Hispanic America.

On the ship to America, his priest tutor caught the plague and died on board in the Atlantic Ocean. Upon approaching the coast, young Prince Cyprian of Bourbon escaped the ship and his imposed religious destiny, having no inherited vocation or aptitude for it. On his very own and due to his genetics and genealogy, he managed to build a life for himself in Mexico, in view of his mentor's death, who had the religious acquaintances in Mexico and contact details of Prince Cipriano's exiled mother the Queen back in France. His father Luis González Bravo died over two years later, deeply saddened by the tragic absence of his son away in America. In his last years in France, Prime Minister Luis had desperately tried to help restore the Bourbon monarchy in Spain, so that his son Prince Cipriano could come back safely to his country and he could be close to him. He saw some hope in joining the Carlists, which he did, in order to at least place back the Carlist Bourbons in the Spanish throne, his hardest political decision ever, and his last failed attempt to bring his son back to Spain from Mexico, in the face of his son's mother Queen Isabella II's endless exile in Paris, and uncertain likelihood at the time, of her dynasty ever recovering the Spanish crown.

All alone in exile in Mexico, Prince Cipriano's unique and powerful genetic heritage led him to become a successful businessman, philanthropist, and member of both the Mexican intellectual and high society and the Spanish community's high society, by his own means. In 1909, five years after his mother the Queen's death in Paris, following his diplomatic vocation inherited from his father, he accepted the Spanish ambassador to Mexico's invitation to become honorary Vice Consul of Spain to Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, where he served as the diplomatic head of the Spanish community from 1909 until his death in 1927. This was the city where he had settled down, founded the "Spanish Hotel" (Hotel Español) for European and foreign businessmen and travellers, and owned salt mines and salt pans. It was then that Prince Cipriano's nephew King Alfonso XIII of Spain, son of Prince Cipriano's late half-brother King Alfonso XII of Spain, learned his whereabouts, and sent him a bundle of presents overseas to Mexico, inviting him to go back to reside in Spain bearing his title of Infante of the Spanish Kingdom (Prince, son of a Spanish sovereign monarch-not of a monarch's consort), his due official recognition as Queen Isabella II's son, and brother of the recently deceased King Alfonso XII. Prince Cipriano thanked him by letter, but stayed to reside in Oaxaca, Mexico, the place he had grown used to and felt safe in after having to face his exile from Spain in the revolution. He did not travel back to Europe to visit Alfonso XIII, due to sea sickness, walking with a cane from a leg accident, and fear of leaving his life, home, business, and beloved family alone (if only for several months for both transatlantic journeys and his stay in Spain), in those uncertain years surrounding the Mexican Revolution. He died years later of a heart attack. Much to his mother Queen Isabella II's regret, he was never able to go back to Europe to visit her, exiled in Paris for life, or his maternal half-siblings, many deceased by then and only a few remaining, some back in Spain since the 1874 Bourbon Monarchy Restoration.

Royal Descendants in Mexico

Prince Cipriano de Borbón y González Bravo married Mexican legal consultant Luz Quiroz from Mexico City, and had one son, Prince Cipriano Luis, who bore his father Prince Cipriano and his grandfather Prime Minister Luis's first names. They divorced and Prince Cipriano went to Oaxaca, Mexico, where he married Genoveva Flores Lara, with whom he had two daughters. His three children from both marriages were first cousins of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Upon Prince Cipriano's death in Salina Cruz, the girls moved with their mother to Mexico City. Princess Milagros, the youngest, born in 1920, never married and owned a fashion boutique in downtown Mexico City. The eldest, Princess Josefina de Borbón González Bravo y Flores, was a Mexico City renowned fashion designer in her time, charity supporter, and humanitarian as president of the Mexican Red Cross International Section. She and her husband, Health Ministry Under Secretary and the medical doctor and close friend of President of Mexico Adolfo López Mateos, Dr. Manuel De Santiago de la Torre, had one son, Lord Manuel De Santiago-de Borbón González Bravo. Lord Manuel was a Mexican Under Secretary of Tourism, and a renowned architect member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites ICOMOS. He was author and co-author of eighteen books, on architecture, urban and city government planning, and his lifetime architectural legacy to Mexico adds to 11,000,000 built square meters nationwide, including famous buildings and national sites all over Mexico. Architect Manuel De Santiago-de Borbón was chosen by President of Mexico Carlos Salinas de Gortari, to restore the building of the Mexican Houses of Congress in Mexico City, headquarters of the Mexico Congress (or Parliament of Mexico), called "Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro", after a fire destroyed it in 1989.

Lord Manuel De Santiago-de Borbón González Bravo's daughter in Mexico, Lady Marina De Santiago-de Borbón Haas Canalizo, Haas being her German maternal surname and Canalizo her maternal surname from her great-great-great grandfather President of Mexico Valentín Canalizo, is a family member and lineal descendant of the House of Bourbon, being four times cousin in several degrees of King of Spain Juan Carlos I de Borbón. Like her, he is great-great-grandson of Queen Isabella II de Borbón. Law 11/1981 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 published during her cousin King Juan Carlos de Borbón's reign, recognizes all children and direct bloodline descendants of any person, including all Spanish monarchs, whether officially legitimate or natural (biological), to have full birthrights. Lady Marina De Santiago-de Borbón Haas Canalizo González-Bravo is the only bloodline descendant in the American continent, of a European Queen and European monarchs, a European Prime Minister, and a President from the Americas simultaneously.

Prince Cipriano de Borbón's issue, the lineal descendants of the romantic union between Queen Isabella II of Bourbon and Prime Minister of Spain President Luis González Bravo, are the only royal Bourbons in the whole of North America and Hispanic America. Like all bloodline descendants of a Spanish monarch, they have dynastic rights and hold a place in the line of succession to the Spanish throne.