The High Cost of Nobility

As part of his program to keep the fires of Hispanidad burning brightly in Latin American hearts, Dictator Francisco Franco maneuvered a law through the Spanish Cortes last year allowing Latinos to lay claim to vacant Spanish titles of nobility once borne by their ancestors. Since then, the project has languished-- partly because of opposition from Spain's rank-proud Committee of Grandees. Last week, however, the government defied the grandees and published a list of 97 out of 400 available Spanish-American titles. They were available, that is, for a price. Claimants whose proofs of lineage were accepted would have to pay up back succession taxes and service charges ranging from 140,000 pesetas ($12,785) for dukes down to a mere 60,000 ($5,479) for barons.

Latinos were in no rush to sign up. Said Jose Mariano Espinoza y Grande, a Mexico City scrap-iron dealer: "I haven't the money, and I wouldn't buy the title [Conde de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe y Penasco] from Franco if I did have it." Miguel de Rul y Palma, who lives off Mexican real estate and is eligible to be called the Conde de la Valenciana, made it clear that he admired Franco "in all his aspects. But," he added, "I am not paying for the title."

Said Chile's Rafael Irarrazaval Correa, heir to the title of Conde de la Conquista and general manager of a Santiago ready-to-wear firm named Vestex: "I'm a citizen of a democratic nation . . . Don't kid me, please."

In Madrid, the grandees conducted a kind of dignified sit-down strike against "foreigners of dubious origin." So far, they had signed the patents of only two claimants. Intoned the committee's secretary, the Marques de Ortasona: "What the king has given, and has been lost, can only be restored by a king." Added another grandee: "We are in no hurry. Perhaps if we slow down enough, the patents will bear the signature of a king and not of a commoner who happens to be chief of state."

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