Edelmira Sampedro y Robato

Who was Edelmira Sampedro y Robato?

Edelmira Ignacia Adriana de Sampedro-Ocejo y Robato was known as Countess of Covadonga after her marriage to Alfonso, Prince of Asturias in 1933.

The Countess was the daughter of a Cuban merchant, Luciano Pablo de Sampedro y Ocejo, later hyphenated to de Sampedro-Ocejo, and wife Edelmira Robato y Turro, later hyphenated Robato-Turro. She was a cousin of Jorge Mañach y Robato. She met the Prince at a Lausanne sanatorium where he was being treated for his haemophilia. They saw each other one night at a cinema in the Swiss city of Lausanne and they fell in love.

Everything was adverse for this young couple from the beginning. The Spanish royal family did not accept the engagement and Edelmira soon had to suffer pressure from the messengers of Alfonso XIII, already exiled in Paris, who took away from his son his five cars, noticeably curtailed his monthly allowance and definitively obliged him to give up his right to succession. No one from the Royal House attended the religious or civil wedding in Ouchy, Lausanne, Switzerland on 21 June 1933, and the invitations that the Count of Covadonga sent to friends and acquaintances were returned to him “with regret”. In the face of his father's bitter opposition to the match, the Prince was quoted: "I love her and want to marry her. Let Juan have the throne.".