Cascais and Estoril – spies & royal families in exile
- Text: Redaktionen
- Jul 7
- 23 min read
Cascais and Estoril in Portugal are a must-see. It is said that Cascais has more kings without thrones than all the five-star hotels in the area. It was here that Ian Fleming got the idea to write about the skilled agent James Bond. If you want to live like a king, you should stay at the luxurious Grande Real Villa Italia Hotel & Spa.
If you want to feel like James Bond, you should stay in his suite at the iconic hotel Palácio Estoril. RESENÄREN's editor-in-chief, Alexander Olin, traveled there and tells us about the exciting story here.
The beautiful landscape slowly glides by as we travel in a 1954 Rolls-Royce. Wherever we stop, tourists come up to us and ask if they can take a picture. My private driver, José Miguel Mira, who runs Superb Tours (superbtours.pt), points to the right or left at one beautiful palace after another. I take notes, my pen glowing. José Miguel owns no fewer than 80 priceless collector's cars. When he drives a royal tour, it's either in the Rolls-Royce that belonged to Alfonso XIII when he was exiled to Rome after abdicating the Spanish throne in 1931, or in a 1954 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn that belonged to the English royal family.
José Miguel talks about Portugal's dictator, António de Oliveira Salazar, who, during World War II, aware of the strength of the British but also knowing he had to maintain friendly ties with Nazi Germany, declared Portugal neutral. He promised the British that he would not take action against the Jews, but at the same time, he promised the Germans that he would not issue visas to Jews seeking protection in Portugal.
For thousands of Europeans fleeing their homelands, Portugal was the only possible destination, as it was peaceful, cheap, and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. It was the perfect bridge to the New World, the United States.
The Estoril Coast was the most sought-after location. Fausto de Figueiredo, a visionary businessman, created the Portuguese Riviera in 1935 and managed to spread the charm of this small part of Portugal throughout Europe with beaches, luxury hotels, casinos, shows, security, and tranquility.
Here, agents and spies (both men and women) from all over the world met to exchange information, spy on each other, spread disinformation among enemy agents, establish contacts, and provide information to clients.
Some were more important than others; some were double- or even triple-agents. Some did it out of idealism, others out of opportunism, and some out of a desire for adventure. It was not uncommon for listening devices to be installed in walls and under carpets to intercept valuable information. False information was spread knowingly, with the agents knowing they were being listened to.
Some spies became legends. One of them was the Spaniard Juan Pujol García, a double agent loyal to Britain. To the British, he was known as "Garbo" and to the Germans as "Alaric". He is considered the agent who led the Germans to believe that the Allied invasion would take place in Pas-de-Calais rather than Normandy. This deception operation, called Operation Fortitude, contributed to the Germans not only reinforcing this area but also keeping their units in Pas-de-Calais, convinced that Normandy was just a diversion.
Another double agent loyal to Britain was the Serb Duško Popov, known to the British as "Tricycle" and to the Germans as "Ivan". He is said to have inspired Ian Fleming when he created James Bond. Both Juan Pujol García and Dusko Popov often stayed in Estoril. Accompanying them in this exodus was the usual escort of journalists, diplomats, and police officers, in search of news and information.
The Costa del Sol quickly became a cosmopolitan, lively, and charming place, especially after the war became a distant event. The Sud Express, the train that connected Paris with Lisbon, made its last stop in Estoril, about 10 km from Lisbon. Cascais inaugurated its railway station in 1946, at a time when the final details of the Estrada Marginal were being finalized.
UMBERTO II – Italy's last king
King Umberto II, the last king of Italy, had a reign of 26 days, a fact that earned him the name "May King", after being forced to abdicate his power following a referendum in favor of establishing a republic in Italy.
The Queen and the couple's four children arrived first, on 6 June 1946, aboard an Italian Navy warship. The Italian royals settled in Cascais, in the Count of Monte Real's mansion, opposite the citadel, where King Luís I died.
They were received by the Pinto Basto family, who gave them exile in the family residence in Cascais, where they settled in what is now the Villa D'Este. Umberto II lived in the Villa d'Este for 11 years, from 1950 to 1961, until a group of loyal Italian monarchists obtained permanent residence near the Villa d'Este.
They contributed to the construction of his permanent residence next to the Villa d'Este, which he named Villa Italia. He lived there until 1982, and died on 18 March 1983 in Geneva. Villa Italia was restored and became the Grande Real Villa Italia Hotel & Spa .
DUKE OF WINDSOR
King Edward VIII abdicated after a year to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson. By 1940, the Duke of Windsor had already caused a stir in Portugal, following a recent scandal. The Duke, King Edward VIII of England, was accompanied for a year (between January and December 1936) by the famous Wallis Simpson, an American "commoner", anything but discreet, with two divorces under her belt. Wallis Simpson was the reason why the Duke of Windsor abdicated from the British throne.
In July 1940, they left Paris for Estoril when the French capital was invaded by the Germans. About a month after their arrival, on 2 August, the Dukes, who had been living at the Espírito Santos home, left the country for the Bahamas, where Edward took up the post of governor.
They settled, with their 85 suitcases, 10 cases of whiskey and servants, in a residence near Boca do Inferno in Cascais, belonging to the banker Ricardo Espírito Santo, who was a friendly host on several occasions.
Cascais was the site of the famous incident of a failed attempt by Gestapo agents to kidnap the Duke of Windsor, in which the spy Dusko Popov was involved; he prevented the Duke and Duchess from being led into a trap laid on the orders of the German Foreign Minister.
Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg
The journey and much of the time in Portuguese exile were quite turbulent for Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg, Prince Félix, and the rest of the family, who were forced to leave the Grand Duchy after the Nazi occupation.
The Führer still tried to get the Grand Duchess to surrender to German troops, but the Grand Ducal family managed to travel to France in time, via the Bordeaux route (with a visa from Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux), arrived in Portugal, passed through Caldas da Rainha and, after a short stay in Praia das Maçais, went to the Grand-Ducais family, the Cascais family, by the Luxembourg honorary consul in Lisbon, Manuel Espírito Santo, at the Casa de Santa Maria.
On 9 August, Luxembourg's ministers Dupong and Bech, along with their families, moved to Monte Estoril. They were to share the Posser de Andrade mansion (located on the corner of Avenida de Sabóia and Conde de Moser), which was rented by the Grand Duchess, who had moved there at the end of the previous month after leaving the Espírito Santo house (now the Jardim Sabóia building).
The focus of the Grand Ducal family, as was often the case during World War II, was to travel to the United States, which would only happen after a long stay in Sintra with José Maria Posser de Andrade, an old family friend. Prince Félix and Jean (his eldest son) would not return to Luxembourg until 10 September 1944. Grand Duchess Charlotte, meanwhile, returned permanently to Luxembourg in April 1945.
Miklós Horthy of Hungary
Admiral Miklós Horthy had served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during World War I and later, after the dissolution of the empire, served as regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between World War I and World War II. He became politically active and in 1920 was appointed head of state of Hungary, the first country in Europe to introduce anti-Semitic laws that made it difficult for Jews to study at Hungarian universities. Hungary's form of government was nationalist, with strong conservative elements, and thus fit well into the wave of nationalist parties and movements that swept across Europe in the 1930s. In 1938, Hungary thus allied itself with Germany and Italy and introduced new anti-Semitic laws. However, when the Holocaust became more radical in 1941 and 1942, Hungary did not follow Germany's radicalization against the Jews. This allowed Jews, albeit with elements of anti-Semitism, to remain in Hungary without being deported to Nazi-controlled areas.
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union a few days later. Under German pressure, the country sent troops to the Soviet Union under German command, but kept most of its troops in Hungary.
As the tide of war turned in 1943, Horthy sought a way out of the alliance with Hitler. Hitler refused and occupied Hungary in mid-March 1944 and installed a pro-Nazi government. This was followed by an escalation of the persecution of Jews, and around 400,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz between March and July 1944.
Horthy reluctantly accepted this situation for the time being. However, when Western countries pressured him and threatened to hold him accountable, Horthy halted the deportations in August 1944. He installed a new prime minister who resumed diplomacy and pulled Hungary out of the war. Hitler, furious, arrested Horthy and took his son hostage to ensure that he would no longer harm German interests. A new pro-German government, the Arrow Cross Party, led by Ferenc Szalazi, took power and remained in power until the end of the war. During this period, persecution of Jews increased. After the war, Horthy was briefly imprisoned by the Americans in Germany under house arrest, but was released in December 1945 and reunited with his family. He also testified at the Nuremberg Trials, accused of having permitted the persecution of Jews, but escaped imprisonment.
But he could not return to Hungary because the country had become a communist state. So the family continued to live in Bavaria, Germany, because no country wanted to receive him, until 1950, when he took refuge in Portugal in a beautiful villa in Estoril, on Rua D. Afonso Henriques, in 1937, because Stalin had decided that he did not intend to make a martyr of the old soldier and preferred to let him die in Portugal.
The choice of Estoril as a place of exile was purely coincidental. Horthy knew that his son was friends with a Portuguese diplomat in Bern who had offered him a visa with Salazar's approval. Friends, including some wealthy Jews, provided him with accommodation in Estoril and covered his expenses.
Every day of his life, spent in exile in Estoril, the "Admiral without a Fleet", as the Hungarian statesman was called, walked along the coast, along paths that today form the Cascais promenade. It is said that it was he who initiated this habit, which is now so popular among the inhabitants of Cascais.
In Estoril, he wrote his memoirs, "A Life for Hungary", in which he described many personal experiences, from his youth to the end of World War II, and in which he always considered himself a "savior of the nation", and that everything he did was to sacrifice himself for the good of Hungary.
When Horthy died in 1957, at the age of 89, he was buried in the British Cemetery in Lisbon. But in 1993, after Hungary had freed itself from communism, he was transferred to Hungary, as he had wished. Thousands of people wearing the Star of David protested when a bust in his honor was unveiled in Budapest.
Carol and Elena Lupescu, King and Queen of Romania
King Carol was the fourth king of Romania. His reputation as a womanizer surpassed that of a ruler, and after several marriages and scandals, he abdicated his right to the throne in favor of his son and went into exile in London and Paris. However, in 1930, he returned to Romania and ascended the throne. After several uprisings across the country, Carol was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Miguel, in 1940.
This was certainly the case for King Carol and his mistress Elena 'Magda' Lupescu, who fled their kingdom in a bullet-riddled train in 1941, with Portugal as a temporary destination, as they intended to seek exile across the Atlantic. Their journey took almost seven months, as the royal couple was held (imprisoned would be the more correct word) in Spain by Franco's regime, which was not interested in starting "diplomatic" conflicts with Hitler. They were forced to flee Spain, crossing the border at Vilar Formoso in secret, hidden under the seats of their car.
They stayed at the Hotel Estoril Palácio before traveling to Rio de Janeiro, where they were married in 1947. They returned to Portugal for good in 1947 and purchased the Villa Mar e Sol (also known as Villa Rei Carol) at Rua do Alentejo nº 4 in Estoril, where they settled and lived until their deaths. King Carol died on 4 April 1953, aged 59, and Elena died in 1977. In 2003, close to the fiftieth anniversary of King Carol's death, his remains were transferred from the Braganza dynasty pantheon to the Curtea de Argeș Cathedral in Romania.
Joanna of Savoy, Czarinagemalin of Bulgaria
Joan of Savoy, born in Rome, was the third daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Helena of Montenegro. In October 1930, she married Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria in a Catholic ceremony held in Assisi, Italy, under the watchful eye of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. She was immediately accepted by the Bulgarian people due to her mother's Slavic ancestry.
During World War II, he was actively involved in charity work and financed a children's hospital. Despite Bulgaria's support for the Axis powers, Queen Johanna helped several Bulgarian Jews flee the country due to hostilities committed by Nazi sympathizers. Her husband, Boris III, was a difficult ally of Nazi Germany, as he did not follow all of Adolf Hitler's orders. In August 1943, after returning from a trip to meet with the German dictator, the Tsar fell seriously ill and died a few days later, officially due to stress leading to a heart attack.
However, unproven suspicions were raised that he had been poisoned. His son, King Simeon II, became King at the age of only six, when a regency council was established, headed by Prince Cyril, who proved more receptive to the Germans.
After the end of World War II, Bulgaria was invaded by the Soviet Union, and Prince Cyril, Johanna's brother-in-law, was tried and executed by the communists for his support of Nazism.
The queen and her son Simeon II remained in the country until 1946, when a coup d'état proclaimed the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the royal family was given 48 hours to leave the country. After a brief exile in Egypt, where the Italian royal family and other European dynasties were in exile, Joanna moved to Spain, where her son received his education.
Later, in 1962, she moved to Estoril, where she lived until the end of her life. In 1993, she returned to Bulgaria to visit the grave of her husband Boris, when a crowd took to the streets to greet her. She died on 26 February 2000 in Estoril, but was buried in the Italian town of Assisi.
Juan de Bourbon, Spanish royal family
Of all the royal exiles in the Golden Triangle, it was the Spanish royal family that had the deepest ties, an almost hereditary affection that remains to this day. However, the Spanish royal family's exile was not only filled with fond memories. The exile would be cursed by a tragic death.
Juan de Bourbon, Count of Barcelona, third in line to the throne of Alfonso XIII of Spain – due to successive abdications by his brothers and his father, he was already in long-term exile and the legitimate heir to the Spanish crown when he arrived in Lisbon on 2 February 1946, on a British Overseas Airways flight from London, accompanied by Maria de las Mercedes de Bourbon-Two Sicilies and Orléans, Countess of Barcelona. They had a three-month residence permit. In all respects, it was a private visit.
Franco disliked this arrangement. He considered it dangerous. He did not want the Prince of Asturias so close to his homeland. In exile, he preferred Rome and Lausanne in Switzerland, where the Spanish royal family had resided between 1931 (after the establishment of the Republic in Spain and the abdication of Alfonso XIII) and that day. Franco ruled Spain, and in Portugal, Salazar ruled, who was more fond of Mussolini's style (already deceased on 28 April 1945) than of his Iberian counterpart.
No two dictatorships are alike, just as no two neutralities are alike. Portugal, as a natural intermediary for the American dream, as an exile of dreams and tungsten, reached the end of World War II with the British alliance in force and its colonies on the map, on its way to the United Nations and the blessed Marshall Plan, which was the US's main plan for the reconstruction of the Allied countries in Europe in the years after World War II.
The foreign policy towards Spain was roughly this: Spain was Spain's problem, but it would become a national problem if it became too sensitive. When they arrived at Portela Airport (a major project under the Estado Novo regime, inaugurated in 1942), the reception committee, after a review by the regime, had no more than a dozen members waiting.
The presence of the Portuguese pretender to the throne was strongly discouraged. The same was true of a royal trip that wanted to leave Spain. Only a few close friends were expected to attend. The event was intended to be discreet. Even before the Bourbons landed on Portuguese soil, they were surrounded by a network that was in many ways transnational. As a gesture of goodwill, Salazar had had Franco send a team of loyal spies to Portugal. Salazar himself had appointed a PIDE agent to act as the Count of Barcelona's permanent escort. Lieutenant João Almeida Costa, the shadow of the Prince of Asturias, slowly became part of the furniture of the lives of those he observed. D. Juan called him "my personal spy". For the Countess, he was the "little guardian". Every day, the agent sent detailed descriptions to Salazar. He wrote a real royal soap opera.
At Portela Airport, he is officially welcomed by Henrique Viana, Chief of Protocol for the Portuguese government, who gives him a warm handshake, and Nicolás Franco, Spain's ambassador to Portugal and older brother of Francisco Franco, who greets him coldly.
The Count of Barcelona knew where he was going, although he was not prepared for the beauty that exile had in store for him, first of all the sea, which he, a keen sailor, had not seen for more than four years. He came from the "expanses of eternal snow".
The Spanish ambassador showered him with honors and immediately placed a luxury car, his own shiny Packard, at his disposal for the duration of his stay. The Count of Barcelona said he would take a taxi to Estoril. He knew that Franco, through his family connections, had pressured Salazar to prevent the trip. At this point in history, in addition to the President of the Council's fascination with royalty rather than the monarchy, the Estado Novo was interested in the international image the Golden Triangle conveyed.
European monarchies were experiencing difficulties. With the exception of Dona Amélia de Bragança, a queen who was deposed by regicide and exiled to England, Portugal was an idyll for the crownless. The taxi stopped at the gate of Villa Papoila in Monte Estoril. It was the first residence of the Spanish royal family – thanks to the Marquises of Pelayo. Bringing his children to Portugal was his most important mission at that time. This issue had to be handled with care. Under no circumstances could it be an official matter. For Franco, it was already known that the more Spanish royals there were, the worse it would be.
It was only the next day that they were able to fully appreciate their new home, which had a huge terrace and garden overlooking Tamariz beach and, further away, Cascais Bay. To complete the picture, there was a golf club nearby. If it had been located in Spain, it would have had everything the Count of Barcelona needed. They did not stay in this house for long. Although it was large, it was too small for the whole family when they reunited in Estoril.
The life of the royal couple quickly became a routine. In the mornings, D. Juan, then 33, would go to the Estoril Golf Club (opened by Fausto Figueiredo in 1929), where he had become a member, strolling leisurely, always with his "shadow" behind him. The counts were happy in their new home, although happiness was always relative, given the absence of their children and their homeland.
The Count of Barcelona's discreet political maneuvering, first with Óscar Carmona, the President of the Republic, and then in an informal meeting with Salazar, who at the time was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, had the desired effect. Salazar, in his characteristic style, told the Prince of Asturias not to worry, that everything would be fine. The Count and Countess of Barcelona spent a lot of time at the golf club, where they made a group of close friends, mostly Portuguese, which was complemented by other friendships that Don Juan made at the Cascais Sailing Club, where he never missed a regatta. Many of these friendships would last forever, with Jorge Arnoso at the forefront. The Countess of Barcelona attended mass every morning at the Salesian Church, devoted herself to charity, and supported institutions for children in need. She became known for her simplicity and her light-blue Volkswagen Beetle, bearing the personal license plate CB, which belonged to the Count of Barcelona.
Salazar kept his word. On 27 April, the first royal shipment arrived in Estoril: Pilar, 12, Margarita, 7, and Alfonso, 5. As was customary, it was not advisable for the children to travel together, as a precaution in view of the succession to the throne. Juan Carlos, aged eight, did not arrive until the following day. By this time, the Counts of Barcelona had already settled, albeit temporarily, in the Villa Bel Ver, which they had been lent by the Counts of Feijó. Of all the people, Infanta Margarita needed the most care, as she was blind. The house was magnificent, with an enormous garden and swimming pool, but it was still considered small.
His dream house, besides the Escorial Palace, was found shortly afterward: the legendary Villa Giralda, once the headquarters of the Estoril Golf Club. (Located at Rua de Inglaterra, 387, in Monte Estoril).
They lived there for 32 years, making it the official residence of the Spanish royal family. They initially rented the house, but on 2 November 1979, they bought it for 3 million pesetas and had it renovated to their specifications, a process that took almost a year. During the period when the work was being carried out, they rented Casa La Rocha in São João do Estoril, where they lived temporarily. On 28 February 1949, the Counts of Barcelona and their two infants moved permanently to Villa Giralda.
Villa Giralda had more than 50 rooms and a 3,000-square-meter garden. The children, Juan Carlos and Alfonso, attended the Amor de Dios school. Pilar, the distant exception, attended the Escravas do Coração de Jesus school in Lisbon. While their parents adapted quickly, the children's adaptation was swift.
The Prince of Asturias' relationship with Franco deteriorated. The letters exchanged from time to time were imbued with venom between the lines. On August 25, 1948, a meeting was arranged between the dictator and the dethroned prince in Spanish waters off the coast of San Sebastián. The Saltillo, Don Juan's sailboat, met the Azor, the president's ship, where Franco awaited him for more than three hours for secret talks, in which little was decided about the pretender to the throne and much about the newborn Juan Carlos.
By mutual agreement, a rare occurrence among these men, it was decided that Juan Carlos should study in Spain. He spoke Portuguese better than Castilian and exaggerated his French accent, a result of his childhood in Canton, even though he was born in Rome. It was imperative that Juan Carlos get to know Spain and the Spanish people, just as it was imperative that they get to know him. Franco did not disagree. Perhaps both realized at that moment that the Count of Barcelona had robbed himself of the Spanish throne, but not Spain of its dynasty.
On 8 November 1948, Juan Carlos traveled to Madrid aboard the Lusitânia Express. He set foot on Spanish soil for the first time that day and did not return to Villa Giralda until 1949 for his long-awaited summer vacation, to reunite with family and friends. The Count of Barcelona did not let him leave at the end of the summer. He would not return to Spain until more than a year later, to undergo extensive military training in all branches of the Spanish armed forces, first in the army, then in the navy, and finally in the air force. These were long years of growth, outside the triangular bubble, where the family's exile was prolonged and made them adoptive Portuguese.
As time passed, the Count of Barcelona realized that the throne of Spain was not lost, but lost to him. Juanito, as his friends called him, was destined to be king. In Estoril, he had his secret country, to which he returned whenever he could. The Countess of Barcelona, daughter of an infant without a throne, wife of a prince without a crown, had the bright hope of having her son on the throne of Spain.
Perhaps as a result of his military training, during one of Juan Carlos's returns to Estoril, this time during Easter Week 1956, the royal family was plunged into tragedy, and life was never the same again. Juan Carlos had just turned 18. His brother Alfonso was 13. They were playing, as boys do, carelessly, as young people do. An accidental shot from a .22 caliber revolver took Alfonso's life on March 29. A case that remains shrouded in mystery to this day. He painted a golden exile black. The Spanish royal family lived in Estoril between 1946 and 1975, the year of Franco's death. The year Juan Carlos was crowned king.
Juanito used to play football with his brother Alfonso and a cousin, next to the gate of the Villa Giralda. The ball had a fatal pull on the precious rose bushes in the garden belonging to Luís Albuquerque de Sousa Lara, a neighbor of the royal family. Sousa Lara had already spoken to the Count of Barcelona about the matter, and the latter had given him the authority to take corrective measures against the royal offenders. And so it happened.
Decades later, Sousa Lara was dining at a restaurant in Madrid when King Juan Carlos arrived with some friends. Sousa Lara wrote a note to the king saying he was at the restaurant and wanted to see him. Juan Carlos gave him a big hug, introduced him to his friends, and said, "Here is the only man alive who can boast of having whipped the King of Spain."
Don Juan de Borbón used the Cimas English Bar restaurant “as a reception hall and private dining room.” He would have a very dry Dry Martini as an aperitif. With the onion soup gratin and the grilled sirloin steak, he served a 1963 Dão Pipas Reserva and, as a digestif, a Haig Dimple whisky.
The so-called King Emeritus, Juan Carlos I, was born in Benito Mussolini's fascist Rome in 1938. His hasty departure from Spain, after details of his secret Swiss bank accounts and money he allegedly debited to influence business deals were revealed, led him to repeat the path taken by previous generations of Bourbons. It has been more than 200 years in exile, starting under Charles IV during the Napoleonic invasions.
The House of Bourbon is a royal house of French origin, currently ruling Spain and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The surname Bourbon, written Borbón in Spain, derives from the castle of Bourbon-l'Archambault, located in the French department of Auvergne, which is the place of origin of the ruling family in both countries, with the exception of Joseph I (1808–1813), Bonaparte's brother, and Amadeo I (1870–1873). All Spanish kings of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries belonged to the Bourbon dynasty: Ferdinand VII (1808–1833), Isabella II (1833–1868), Alfonso XII (1875–1885), Alfonso XIII (1886–1931), Juan Carlos I (1975–2014), and Felipe VI (2014–present).
Joseph of Habsburg-Lotharingia, of Hungary
When Admiral Horthy came to power, Archduke Josef Franz Leopold Anton Ignatius Maria of the former royal house of Hungary decided to remain in his country, where in the summer of 1924, he married the daughter of King Friedrich August III of Saxony, Princess Anna.
When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary again in 1944, he fled to Portugal via Bordeaux, where he obtained a visa to enter Portugal from the Portuguese consul in the French city, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who granted visas to thousands of Jews and managed to secure the freedom of several European royalty.
Josef Franz was initially taken care of by Maria Benedita D'Oriol Pena, but eventually bought a house in Carcavelos, in Casal da Serra, where he died on 25 September 1957. He was buried in the cemetery of Feldafing (Bavaria). During the Habsburgs' stay, the Nazi regime tried several times to have him extradited, but Salazar never agreed.
Kings of France
Philippe d'Orléans (grandson of Louis Philippe I, last King of France) and Marie Isabelle d'Orléans (Countess of Paris), grandparents of Charles-Philippe d'Orléans (Duke of Anjou), had been among the last to arrive on the "Portuguese Riviera", an epithet that Estoril had earned during the long years of World War II, when the Golden Triangle (Estoril, Sintra, Cascais) welcomed many crowned heads to their exile "sur mer".
At that time, it was said that there were more kings per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world, which was not particularly civilized, except for the oases of neutrality, little pieces of paradise where monarchies remained in a kind of constitutional dry dock, where even the future seemed emeritus.
Some of them had escaped attempted regicide. Others had escaped the clutches of Nazism, when the two things were not the same.
Quinta do Anjinho, former residence of the Counts of Paris in Sintra and current headquarters of the National Firefighting School (the unit responsible for training Portuguese firefighters), where the Counts of Paris lived between 1946 and 1951.
But it is not only royal families that appear in the stories of exiles in Estoril.
Fulgêncio Batista, the Cuban dictator, was also welcomed to Portugal in 1959 after seeking asylum in Brazil and the United States. He traveled to Lisbon and then to the island of Madeira, but eventually settled in Estoril. In February 1938, before the war began, the German intellectual Stefan Zweig, exiled in London after fleeing Nazi persecution, passed through Estoril. From the seaside resort of Estoril, Zweig wrote two letters to his friends Joseph Roth and Sigmund Freud, inviting them to spend a "southern break" in this "quiet place on the Portuguese Riviera".
The historian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), of Romanian origin, spoke eight languages fluently and lived at Rua da Saudade, no. 13, in Cascais, as attested by a plaque placed there. It was there that he wrote his work "A History of Religious Ideas", published in 1949. The painters Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall, and Max Ernst also traveled through Portugal during World War II.
Marc Chagall's fate was even worse. The Russian painter and ceramist, who was Jewish, was arrested by the Gestapo in France before arriving in Lisbon, on his way to the United States. Chagall was deeply depressed and became even more depressed when he saw hundreds of Jews at the pier, whom he himself was packing with their bags. At that time, he wrote a poem about the Lisbon pier and his grief.
Between January and October 1940, Portugal, a neutral European port, was also visited by the former presidents of Lithuania and Russia, Antanas Smetona and Kerensky, respectively, as well as former leaders of Greece, Yugoslavia, Belgium, and France, all on their way into exile.
The deportees all stayed between Cascais, Estoril, Lisbon, and Sintra, but while in the capital, the Jews sold everything they had with them. Sometimes they exchanged large cars for boat tickets to the United States and queued endlessly outside the American embassy to get their visas.
It was during this period that Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, defied Salazar and, in just five days, granted thousands of visas to Portugal to refugees of various nationalities. Among them was Baron Henri de Rothschild, from the English branch of the famous Jewish banking family.
Intellectuals, writers, film directors, and artists were also regulars in Estoril's social life during the war years. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the author of The Little Prince, arrived in 1940 and stayed much longer. He got to know the entire area around Estoril and Sintra and visited all the places worth seeing, always with a small notebook in his pocket. Saint-Exupéry initially stayed at the Hotel Palácio, but later preferred the intimate atmosphere of a villa near the casino.
In November 1940, millionaire Charles Guggenheim and India's future Prime Minister, Indira Nehru, stayed at the same hotel. Filmmaker Max Ophuls arrived in 1941 with his family and lived in the Bela Vista house in Estoril. However, the man who went to Hollywood to make several social satire films did not stay long on the coast, but quickly left for the United States.
The same happened to his professional colleagues Jean Renoir and René Clair , who spent time at the casino and on the beach during their stay, but flew to the promised land at the first opportunity. The same was true for the film director Herbert Wilcox and the actress Anna Neagle. Maurice Maeterlinck, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the well-known economic guru John Maynard Keynes were also in Estoril at the same time.
It is often said that at that time there were more kings without thrones in Cascais than five-star hotels, which certainly contributed to the consolidation of the epithet that has existed since the time of King Charles: "Cascais, the land of kings and fishermen". Interestingly, today there are more wonderful five-star hotels than fishermen.
