Alfonso XIII[a] (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 known as El Africano or the African for his Africanist views, was King of Spain from his birth until 14 April 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed.

Alfonso's mother, Maria Christina of Austria, served as regent until he assumed full powers on his sixteenth birthday in 1902.

With public opinion divided over World War I, and moreover a split between pro-German and pro-Entente sympathizers, Alfonso XIII used his relations with other European royal families to help preserve a stance of neutrality, as espoused by his government;[4][5] however, several factors weakened the monarch's constitutional legitimacy: the rupture of the turno system, the deepening of the Restoration system crisis in the 1910s, a trio of crises in 1917, the spiral of violence in Morocco,[6] and especially the lead-up to the 1923 installment of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, an event that succeeded by means of both military coup d'état and the king's acquiescence.

[8] Upon the political failure of the dictatorship, Alfonso XIII removed support from Primo de Rivera (who was thereby forced to resign in 1930) and favoured (during the dictablanda) an attempted return to the pre-1923 state of affairs.

Five days later, he was carried in a solemn court procession with a Golden Fleece around his neck and was baptised with water specially brought from the River Jordan in Palestine.

During the regency, in 1898, Spain lost its colonial rule over Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines to the United States as a result of the Spanish–American War.

[15] His health deteriorated around 10 January 1890, and doctors reported his condition as the flu attacked his nervous system leaving the young king in a state of indolence.

Finally, Alfonso's mother Maria Christina wanted him to marry a member of her family, the House of Habsburg-Lorraine, or some other Catholic princess, as she considered the Battenbergs to be non-dynastic.

Victoria met Maria Christina and Alfonso in Biarritz, France, later that month, and converted to Catholicism in San Sebastián in March.

This office used the Spanish diplomatic and military network abroad to intercede for thousands of POWs – transmitting and receiving letters for them, and other services.

Spain was neutral and thus under no wartime censorship restrictions, so his illness and subsequent recovery were reported to the world, while flu outbreaks in the belligerent countries were concealed.

Critics of the monarchy thought the war was an unforgivable loss of money and lives, and nicknamed Alfonso el Africano ("the African").

In 1922, the Cortes started an investigation into the responsibility for the Annual disaster and soon discovered evidence that the King had been one of the main supporters of Silvestre's advance into the Rif mountains.

[25] With the Africanists comprising only a minority, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the abandonistas forced the Spanish to give up on the Rif, which was part of the reason for the military coup d'état later in 1923.

These generals were associated with the innermost military clique of Alfonso XIII and wanted to prevent investigations about Annual from tarnishing the monarch, even if Primo de Rivera had embraced Abandonista positions prior to that point.

During the dictatorship, the king increased his public presence, siding with a Catholic, anti-Catalanist, dictatorial and militarist brand of Spanish nationalism.

[31] On 28 January 1930, amid economic problems, general unpopularity and a putschist plot led by General Manuel Goded in motion,[32] of which Alfonso XIII was most probably aware,[33] Miguel Primo de Rivera was forced to resign, exiling to Paris, only to die a few weeks later of the complications from diabetes in combination with the effects of a flu.

Back in 1926, Alfonso XIII had appointed Berenguer as Chief of Staff of the Military House of the King, a post conventionally fit for burned-out generals in order to move them away from the spotlight for a time in a show of affection.

The enforced changes relied on the incorrect assumption that Spaniards would accept the notion that nothing had happened after 1923 and that going back to the prior state of things was possible.

[38] Some of the grievances against the actions of Alfonso XIII as a king included interference in state institutions to reinforce his personal power, bargaining personal support from the military clique with rewards and merits, his abuse of the power to dissolve the legislature, rendering the co-sovereignty between the Nation and the Crown a total fiction; that he had disproportionately fostered the Armed forces (often to contain internal protest), had used the armed forces abroad with imperialist aims alien to the interests of the nation but his own, that he had personally devised the military operation of Annual behind the back of the Council of Ministers, and that following the massacre of Annual that "cost the lives of thousands of Spanish lads", he had decided to launch a coup with the help of a few generals rather than facing scrutiny in the legislature.

[40] The debate ended with an eloquent speech by Prime Minister Manuel Azaña pleading for the unanimity of the house "to condemn and exclude D. Alfonso de Borbón from the law, proclaiming the majesty of our republic, the unbreakable will of our civism and the permanence of the Spanish glories framed by the institutions freely given by the Nation".

[42] Involved in anti-Republican plots from his exile, and keen to draw support from the Carlists in the context of the uneasy and competing relations between the Carlist and Alfonsist factions within the radicalised monarchist camp, in the aftermath of so-called Pact of Territet he issued a statement dated 23 January 1932 endorsing the manifesto launched by Carlist claimant Alfonso Carlos (in which the latter hinted at the cession of dynastic rights should the former king accept "those fundamental principles which in our traditional regime have been demanded of all Kings with precedence of personal rights"), with the dethroned king likewise accusing in the document the reformist Republic to be "inspired and sponsored by communism, freemasonry and judaism".

The tradition of Ratoncito Pérez replacing the lost milk teeth with a small payment or gift while the child sleeps is almost universally followed today in Spain and Hispanic America.

Alfonso XIII is also mentioned on the plaque that the City Council of Madrid dedicated in 2003 to Ratoncito Pérez on the second floor of number eight of Calle del Arenal [es], where the mouse was said to have lived.

In 1917, Alfonso instructed the Spanish consul in Jerusalem, Antonio de la Cierva y Lewita, Count of Ballobar, to help protect Palestinian Jews.

[64] Alfonso is occasionally referred to as "the playboy king", due in part to his promotion and collection of Spanish pornographic films, as well as his extramarital affairs.

These films featured content considered immoral and degenerate, including sexual relationships involving Catholic priests, lesbianism, and "women with enormous breasts" (the last of which is said to have been Alfonso's passion).