Duchess signs a family pre-nup

At the age of 85, one of Spain's richest, most senior aristocrats wants to wed a civil servant young enough to be her son. Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, a distant relative of Britain's Queen, has signed over chunks of her wealth to her wary children.

The twice-married matriarch's supreme title is Duchess of Alba, but she has over 40 others. Her 60-year-old lover, Alfonso Diez, works for the Spanish social security administration.

They first met decades ago, as her second husband was friends with Diez's brother, an antiques dealer. After a chance meeting in a cinema about three years ago, the duchess and Diez became a couple.

The Duchess said, in a rare radio interview early this year, that she wanted to marry Diez but her children - five men and a woman - were against it. She denied any suggestion Diez was a gold-digger.

"Alfonso does not want anything. He has renounced everything," she told COPE radio. "All he wants is me."

Last month, the Spanish press reported that the duchess had registered her children as owners of palaces, castles and other property around Spain upon her death. For now, though, she retains control of the 500-year-old House of Alba.

The early division of most of the vast family fortune appears to have appeased her children somewhat.

Her youngest son, Cayetano Martinez de Irujo, 48, said last week of his mother's desire to marry Diez: "We have found the solution for her to be able to do it."

He said he and his siblings remained unenthused, however, by the planned nuptials.

"I absolutely accept their relationship, if it is what they say it is," Martinez de Irujo said, but he insisted they should not wed.

"If in the end my mother decides to get married, we will attend even though we still do not agree," Martinez de Irujo told the newspaper El Mundo.

Another newspaper, El Pais, said estimates of the duchess' wealth - it includes paintings by Goya and Velazquez and a first edition copy of Cervantes' Don Quixote - range widely from €600 million to €3.5 billion.

But her fortune is hard to calculate as some is in stocks - by nature volatile - and the art masterpieces, classified as Spanish national heritage by the government, cannot be removed from the country and so would raise less at auction, according to Jose Luis Sampredro, a historian who has written a book on the House of Alba.

The duchess also owns priceless historic documents, Sampredro said, adding: "Who can say how much a letter from Christopher Columbus is worth, and she has several."