In Madrid, wellborn Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón, 32, is the girl who couldn't catch a man. Her three brothers and three sisters had long since married. Fabiola has large, dark brown eyes and is an attractive young woman, though no raving beauty. Educated in Paris, she speaks perfect English and French and German, as well as Spanish, swims well and plays adequate tennis. Instead of attending university; she took nurse's training in military hospitals in San Sebastian and Madrid. In her spare time, Fabiola designed Christmas cards and published a children's book called The Twelve Marvelous Tales.
Though not of royal blood, the De Moras belong to the upper nobility. Fabiola's father, Gonzalo, who died in 1957, was the fourth Marqués de Casa Riera, and her mother claims descent from the royal houses of the extinct Spanish kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre. Last January Fabiola went to Switzerland to visit Queen Victoria Eugenia, widow of Spain's Alfonso XIII. While there, she met for the first time lanky (6 ft.), retiring Baudouin, 30, King of the Belgians. There were other meetings during the summer, but Fabiola continued to live quietly in her Madrid apartment, and continued her normal pursuits: churchgoing, charitable works, visits to her mother in the Calle Zurbano man sion which is large enough and magnificent enough to have been considered by the U.S. Government for its embassy in Spain.
Last week Fabiola let her family in on a secret, flew to Paris with her mother, and went on to Belgium. At week's end in Brussels, the secret was revealed to the world when King Baudouin announced his engagement to Fabiola de Mora. Madrid society gasped. "Astounding!" cried one count in clipped accents and added, "Are you absolutely sure it's Fabiola?" One of her friends said loyally, "She is very devout, very Spanish, just what foreigners think most Spanish girls are like—not like the new generation." Generalissimo Franco wired King Baudouin his congratulations and his hope that the marriage will "reinforce the already traditional bonds* of friendship and esteem which unite our countries."
There was rejoicing in Belgium, which has not had a reigning queen since Baudouin's popular mother, the lovely Astrid of Sweden, was killed in a 1935 Swiss auto accident. It was hoped that marriage would mellow the taciturn and glumly authoritarian manner of King Baudouin, and the royal wedding would help take Belgian minds off the bloody catastrophe of the Congo. The rest of the world experienced the warming reaction that seems to come, especially to democratic nations, with every pomp and circumstance of vanishing royalty. In this case there was a special cause for cheers: the Cinderella girl who couldn't seem to catch a man had caught a king.
* In Spain's long, bloody and losing 16th century war with The Netherlands, the Catholic Belgians fought at Spain's side against the Dutch.