Juana Alfonsa Milán y Quiñones de León (1916-2005). Illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who had her from the Irish nanny Beatrice Noon (but some claim she was Scottish).
After her birth, she was sent to Paris to be educated by José María Quiñones de León, ambassador of Spain in France, great friend of the King and later his executor. The child was registered with the name Jeanne-Alphonsine Milán and her birth was placed in the capital of France. The surname has an uncertain origin. Some believe that it is a memory of the duque de Milán, one of the titles that Alfonso XIII used in his sentimental escapades.
She was endowed with great intelligence and a prodigious memory, so she acquired an extensive culture, learned to speak five languages without an accent and to play the piano. Later, when she reached the appropriate age, she was sent to a very strict school in Grenoble where young girls belonging to the great French families were educated.
Juana Alfonsa always thought that the ambassador was her grandfather, although she also professed a certain affection for a very special friend, Alfonso XIII, who visited the faithful Quiñones de León a couple of times a year.
In 1936, when she was 21 years old, she found out that she was the daughter of the King of Spain. During the occupation of Paris she settled in Geneva and when Alfonso XIII died in 1941 she received one million pesetas, a fortune at that time.
She began to behave erratically and squander the money bequeathed by her father. However, happiness, like money, seemed to slip through her fingers. And so did love. Lovers followed one another. She had four children - from different fathers - whom she barely cared for. One of the children died in a French hospice.
In 1972 she was in Spain, where she was sentenced to six years of prison for falsification of commercial documents. In 1993, Juana Alfonsa was living in Madrid. Her father's fortune had long since been lost in the excesses of a life without direction. She barely received 50,000 pesetas a month (300 euros) from the administrators of her father's estate.
One day in 1994 she suffered a fall. The social workers and the people who looked after her managed to admit her to the Hospital de la Fuenfría in Cercedilla. There, given her condition as a patient with a long recovery period, she shares a corridor with terminally ill patients. She faces the human drama although she is happy there because she discovers that the centre was inaugurated by her father. She was never able to take care of herself again. In 2001 she got a place in a nursing home in Mirasierra. She did not go unnoticed: she frequented the cafeteria and even wrote some articles in Ecos de Mirasierra, the center's magazine.
- "Debió de ser un bebé robusto, rubensino, de piel blanquísima y pelusilla pelirroja como lo era el cabello de su madre Beatriz Noon... Según el historiador Ramón de Franch, el exilio especuló con que aquella joven de abundante cabello pelirrojo y ademanes refinados era la nueva amante del Rey." [She must have been a robust bay, ruddy, with white skin and red hair like her mother Beatrice Noon... According to the historian Ramón de Franch, the exiles speculated that this young woman with abundant red hair and refined manners was the King's new lover.] https://www.elmundo.es/loc/famosos/2023/05/02/6450c4ade4d4d8eb0f8b4576.html
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