María del Carmen Ruiz Moragas (1898 – May 20, 1936) was a Spanish actress. For years, she was the mistress of

King Alfonso XIII Alfonso XIII ( Spanish: ''Alfonso León Fernando María Jaime Isidro Pascual Antonio de Borbón y Habsburgo-Lorena''; French: ''Alphonse Léon Ferdinand Marie Jacques Isidore Pascal Antoine de Bourbon''; 17 May 1886 – 28 February 1941), also ...

, with whom she had two children.

Early life

Ruiz was born in Madrid,

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. Her parents lived in Madrid but they were from

Málaga Málaga (; ) is a Municipalities in Spain, municipality of Spain, capital of the Province of Málaga, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. With a population of 591,637 in 2024, it is the second-most populo ...

. In her long career in the Spanish theater industry she had the honor to participate in famous works made by directors well known and even in some European co-productions. She belonged to people dedicated to theater, but at the same time to the bourgeois class of

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

. In the 1920s and 1930s, she was a lover of

and had two children with him: Leandro and María Teresa. She died of cancer in 1936.

Career

She started her career as actress at age 20, when she finished working for

María Guerrero María Ana de Jesús Guerrero Torija (April 17, 1867 - January 23, 1928), better known as María Guerrero, was a prominent Spanish theatre actress, producer and director. Life and work María Guerrero Torija was born in Madrid in 1867. She enr ...

company. She was a pioneer of silent films. She became a famous Spanish actress before the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...

. She acted throughout Spain but achieved great success representing dramas as Mother Joy, Malvaloca, In the 1920s, she became a famous dramatic actress. In the 1930s, Ruiz established a theater company and achieved success in theaters throughout Spain, including

, Lara, Princess Beatriz, Princess Isabel, Pavón and Cervantes. During the first half of the twentieth century, she worked mainly in the theater with Spanish actors such as Fernando Díaz de Mendoza,

Enrique Rambal Enrique Rambal (8 May 1924 – 15 December 1971) was a Spanish-Mexican actor. He appeared in more than 60 films between 1952 and 1971. Enrique had married actresses Mercedes Borque and Lucy Gallardo. Selected filmography * ''The Martyr of C ...

Pepita Meliá A pumpkin seed, also known as a ''pepita'' (from the Mexican , 'little seed of squash'), is the edible seed of a pumpkin or certain other cultivars of squash. The seeds are typically flat and oval with two axes of symmetry, have a white outer ...

and

Carola Fernán Gómez Carola is a female given name, the Latinized form of the Germanic given names Caroline or Carol. People named Carola include: Acting * Carola Braunbock (1924–1978), Czech-born East German actress * Carola Höhn (1910–2005), German actre ...

Personal life

She belonged to people dedicated to theater, but at the same time to the bourgeois class of Madrid. She married Mexican matador Rodolfo Gaona in

Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...

in 1917; the marriage did not last long. In the 1920s and the 1930s, she was mistress of

. By the king, she had two children: * Anna María Teresa Ruiz y Moragas (9 October 1925 - 6 September 1965); * Leandro Alfonso Luis Ruiz y Moragas (26 April 1929 - 18 June 2006). Carmen became ill and died in 1936. Although their economic situation was not bad, their children received indirect help from their father. In 2003, Leandro used this as proof of his paternity, and obtained from the Spanish court the right for himself and his sister (posthumously) to use the surname ''Bourbon''.

References

Bibliography

* The real life and history of the theater (2005) Juan Join . * Catálogo . ra Filmoteca española. (2003). * Un siglo de cine español (1998), author: Luis Gasca enciclopedias Planeta . * Diccionario Akal de teatro (1997) author: Manuel Gómez García. * Historia del teatro María Guerrero (1998). * The scene M.Fca.Vilches Madrid between 1926–1931 and Dru Dougherty (1998) Ed.Fundamentos. His career as an actor, director and entrepreneur during those years. * Leandro de Borbón, mis padres, mi historia, (2007) Esfera de los libros. * Newspapers of the time since the 1915s across Spain: La Vanguardia, ABC,

El Heraldo de Madrid The ''Heraldo de Madrid'' (originally ''El Heraldo de Madrid'') was a Spanish daily newspaper published from 1890 to 1939, with an evening circulation. It came to espouse a Republican leaning in its later spell. History The publication was fo ...

, El Sol, El Liberal, El Correo Vasco, La Voz, Ya, Blanco y Negro ... {{DEFAULTSORT:Ruiz Moragas, Carmen 1936 deaths 1898 births Mistresses of Spanish royalty Actresses from Madrid Spanish film actresses 20th-century Spanish actresses