Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba
18th Duchess of Alba, Grandee of Spain
María del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y Silva, 18th Duchess of Alba GE (28 March 1926 – 20 November 2014) was a Spanish aristocrat.
She was the third woman of the House of Alba to hold the Dukedom of Alba in her own right. Also, during her life, she was the most titled aristocrat in the world, as recognized by The Guinness Book of Records; she was grandee of Spain fourteen times and had around 50 noble titles. This record is now held by Princess Victoria of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, 20th Duchess of Medinaceli.
First years
Born in Liria Palace in Madrid on 28 March 1926, Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart was the only child of Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba (a prominent Spanish politician and diplomat during the 1930s and 1940s) and his wife, María del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay, 9th Marchioness of San Vicente del Barco. She was the eighth great-granddaughter of James II and VII.
She was baptized on 17 April 1926 in the Royal Chapel, her godparents being King Alfonso XIII and his wife, Queen Victoria Eugenia. For her baptism, the baptismal font of Santo Domingo de Guzmán was brought, which is only used to baptize monarchs or their descendants.
Almost everyone knew her as Cayetana, the name she preferred. Her father called her "Tanuca" and Queen Sofia and other close associates called her "Tana".
A few months after Cayetana was born, her mother, María del Rosario, fell ill with tuberculosis.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba” is 18th Duchess of Alba, Grandee of Spain. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cayetana, Fitz-James and Stuart, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q287046. VIAF identifies the subject as 163688035. The Library of Congress control number is n97081634. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.