Spain's richest woman, Duchess of Alba, dies at 88 SPAIN'S richest woman, an eccentric Spanish aristocrat who boasted more titles than the Queen and laid claim to the Scottish crown, died yesterday morning aged 88. The Duchess of Alba, who had an estimated fortune of £2.4 million passed away at her Duenas Palace in the southern city of Seville after contracting pneumonia. Her third husband, Alfonso Diez Carabantes, a commoner 24 years her junior who she gave up her vast fortune to marry three years ago, was by her bedside. Known for her unruly frizzy hair and flamboyant dress sense, the duchess - born Maria del Rosario Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart and known affectionately as "Cayetana" - was Spain's best known society figure whose antics fuelled gossip magazines and gripped the audiences of television chat shows. As the 18th Duchess of Alba, she was the most titled noble in the world with more than 40 noble titles and 150 hereditary ones and was said to be able to walk the length and breadth of the country without ever leaving her property. Such was her nobility that legend has she would not have to curtsy to either the King of Spain or the Queen. Nor would she have to kneel before the Pope. Her lineage could be traced back to the Stuart dynasty making her a contender for the Scottish crown, had it become an independent state. She was a distant relative of both Winston Churchill and Princess Diana and a childhood friend of Queen Elizabeth, whom she got to know in London when her father was ambassador to Britain during the war. She married for the first time aged 21 in Seville Cathedral in a celebration estimated to have cost the equivalent of £1.4 million to aristocratic naval officer Pedro Luis Martinez de Irujo y Artazcoz. The wedding was said to rival that of Queen Elizabeth II to Prince Philip a month later. She went on to have six children before being widowed in 1972 and six years later she scandalised the establishment by marrying a defrocked Jesuit priest, her confessor Jesus Aguirre y Ortiz de Zarate, who died in 2001. One of her big passions was flamenco and she was noted for her dancing talent but she was also a huge patron of the arts amassing a private collection, said to rival that of any in Europe with masterpieces from the likes of Titian, Goya, Renoir, Chagall and Rubens. Once a famed beauty, who in later years underwent countless plastic surgery procedures, she wrote in an autobiography that she had once turned turn a request by artist Pablo Picasso to become his muse because she thought "he would have worn me out." She did become a fixture of the international jet-set, hosting Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy on their visits to Spain and turning her Madrid palace over to French designer Yves Saint Laurent to stage a Dior fashion show in 1959. An aficionado of bull fighting and flamenco, she often took place of honour at bull fights in her beloved Seville, usually sporting a magnificent "mantilla" - the traditional Spanish lace veil worn over a high comb. But in later years it was the drama of her romantic life that gripped Spain. In 2011 she announced she would wed her long-term companion, a civil servant 24 years her junior provoking disapproval from King Juan Carlos and causing a rift among her children. She wed Alfonso Diez Carabantes in a "quiet" ceremony attended by close friends and some family members after publicly renouncing her wealth and making her will public. She divided the inheritance between her five sons, one daughter and eight grandchildren, giving them each a palace and huge estates.