Count of Osorno and Belén Corsini de Lacalle get engaged

The Count of Osorno is engaged to his girlfriend Belén Corsini de Lacalle, according to ABC.  

Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Solís, Count of Osorno, 28, who is the youngest son of the 19th Duke of Alba, is set to wed Belén Corsini, 31, after two years of dating – but they have not yet set a date due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The couple spent lockdown at the family’s 18th century estate Liria Palace in Madrid, with the Count’s father and uncle.

Belén, who manages family businesses, is the granddaughter of Jacobo Corsini Marquina and the daughter of Juan Carlos Corsini and Mónica de Lacalle Rubio. 

The Corsini Muñoz family are descendants of the engineer Carlos Corsini Senespleda, founder of the company Corsán construction company.

Carlos Fitz-James Stuart y Solís and Belén have rarely been spotted together – the first being at the wedding of the Marquis de Pickman, in Seville, and a second that of Manuel de Lacalle and Valentina Zuloaga – the founder of Es Fascinante, in Zumaia. 

The couple’s happy news means it will be the first family wedding since 2018, when Carlo’s elder brother Don Fernando Juan Fitz-James-Stuart y Solís-Beaumont, to use his full name, tied the knot with girlfriend Sofía Palazuelo in a lavish ceremony at his family home.

The eldest son of Carlos Fitz-James Stuart and Matilde de Solís and heir apparent to the dukedom of Alba, wore full military regalia representing the Royal Cavalry Armory of Seville for his wedding which began at midday in the gardens of the estate.  

The couple were joined by no less than 750 wedding guests including the likes of Spain’s Emeritus Queen Sofia, and designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada.

Following the ceremony the newly weds hosted an aperitivo and long lunch on the same estate serving beer from the family’s own brewery La Casa de Alba.

They performed their first dance to a waltz before their guests joined them on the dance floor and partied until the early hours.

It is no surprise that the wedding was a lavish affair with the groom being the grandson of the late Duchess of Alba, or María del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, to give her the full name. 

Worth an estimated £2.2billion, the Spanish duchess was one of Europe’s wealthiest aristocrats when she passed away in November 2014 at her Seville residence, Duenas Palace.

Friends, relatives and well-wishers paid their respects to the duchess, also known as ‘Cayetana’, after she died following a battle with pneumonia.

Her husband Alfonso Diez, who was 24 years her junior, is thought not to have received any of her fortune, which included an impressive property portfolio, 50,000 pieces of artwork and 18,000 rare books, after he signed a document renouncing any claim to her wealth prior to their marriage in October 2011.

Instead, the Duchess – who is a direct royal descent from King James II of England – left her entire estate to her six children, with them each receiving a palace, as well as thousands of acres of land. Her eight grandchildren are also said to have inherited a substantial chunk of her estate. 

A relative of Winston Churchill, the duchess shared toys with England’s future Queen Elizabeth while living in England as a girl.

She was 14 times a Spanish grandee, five times a duchess, once a countess-duchess, 18 times a marchioness, 18 times a countess and once a viscountess, according to the entry.

With her cloud of white hair and face moulded by plastic surgery, she was rarely out of the Spanish gossip magazines.

‘If they forget you, you are nobody,’ she once told one of the Spanish celebrity magazines of which she was a fixture.

The 13th Duchess of Alba was a muse of artist Francisco Goya in the 18th century and is rumoured to be the subject of ‘La Maja Desnuda’, his famous portrait of a reclining nude which hangs in Madrid’s Prado gallery. 

Born in 1926 in a neoclassical palace in Madrid, she spent much of her childhood in London when her father was ambassador to Britain and where she dined with Winston Churchill and played with Princess Margaret.

Her father, an Anglophile and royalist, sided with dictator Francisco Franco at the beginning of Spain’s Civil War but relations grew frosty as it became clear Franco would not reinstate a king as head of Spain.

The twice-widowed duchess first married aged 21 in 1947 to fellow aristocrat Luis Martinez de Irujo in a wedding on a scale to rival that of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth later that year.

Wearing a pearl and diamond crown, she rode to Seville Cathedral in a horse-drawn carriage with thousands of well-wishers lining the streets to cheer her. The couple had six children.

She became a fixture of the international jet-set, hosting Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy on their visits to Spain and turning her Madrid palace over to French designer Yves Saint Laurent to stage a Dior fashion show in 1959.

An aficionado of bull-fighting and flamenco, she often took place of honour at bull-fights in her beloved Seville, usually sporting a magnificent ‘mantilla’ – the traditional Spanish lace veil worn over a high comb.

The duchess, who favoured an eccentric clothing style, sporting beaded anklets and fishnet tights well into her eighties, married former Catholic priest Jesus Aguirre Ortiz de Zarate six years after the death of her first husband.

Her second husband died in 2001. Her courtship with dashing civil servant Alfonso Diez gripped the nation, aroused disapproval from Queen Sofia and was openly opposed by her six children.

Before tying the knot with 61-year-old Diez in 2011, the duchess divided her fortune between her offspring to silence their protests.