Pensions for Spanish royals

February 9, 1908

The Spanish Council of State today granted a pension of 250,000 pesetas to Infante Alfonso, the son of Prince Carlos of Bourbon-Two-Sicilies.   The young Infante's mother was the late Infanta Mercedes, Princess of Asturias.   Prince Carlos recently married Princess Louise of Orléans.

The Council of State's approval for the pension will now go before the Cortes, reports the New York Times.

The approval for the allowance has "raised many complications," as there are other suits for similar payments "brought by the natural children" of the late King Alfonso XII by Elena Sanz, a well-known Spanish actress, and Carlos Allen-Perkins, a "natural cousin" of King Alfonso.  Allen-Perkins is described as a "second rate, but popular actor" in Madrid's music halls.

Many of the pensions given to members of collateral branches of the Spanish royal family "were suppresed during the dynastic troubles in the first half of the century and the revolution of 1868."  The pensions were never restored.

Perkins claim goes back to Infanta Carlotta, who "provoked the Carlist war by obliging Ferdinando VII to admit the principle of Salic law.

Perkins's birth was not recorded in the Almanach de Gotha, but he says his real name is Don Francisco Carlos Pio Jose Alfonso Luis Fernando Allen Perkins Gurowsky Bourbon Lutherian Jossen Drichma Vrichina and Ottendorf," which makes him a blood relative of most of Europe's reigning sovereigns.

The suit by Elena Sainz's heirs "for recognition as natural children" of King Alfonso XII is now in progress.

[Charles Allen Perkins y Gurowski was born on July 21, 1874 at Paris, France and died on January 15, 1929 in Madrid.  He was the second and younger son of Doña Maria Isabella Francois Gurowski y Borbon and Charles Allen-Perkins (September 17, 1831 in Salisbury, CT, -1892 at Syracuse, New York).   Doña Maria Isabella was one of eight children of Count Ignaz Waclaw Gurowski and Infanta Isabel Fernanda of Spain, daughter of Infante Francisco de Paula of Spain, Duke of Cadiz, and Princess Luisa Carlotta of Bourbon-Two-Sicilies.]