Our story

Our History

Badajoz, 1876. A king in love, an Extremaduran poet, cocoa freshly arrived from the Philippines, and a chocolatier who couldn't sleep at night.

That's where we come from.

The untold story

Some love stories change the lives of those who live them; others change the destiny of a country. Alfonso XII had both, almost simultaneously.

What follows is a mixture of documented facts, palace chronicle, and the foundational legend that has been passed down for nearly a century and a half in this house. We tell it this way because that's how it reached us: one part is history, and another is whispered in the workshops while the chocolate is tempered.

Three women, three sweets

María de las Mercedes, or the shortest honeymoon in Spanish history

She was the daughter of the Duke of Montpensier; he was the recently restored king. They were cousins: the two branches of the family had been feuding for the crown for years, yet Alfonso insisted on marrying her. "I will make you queen," he told her. He did.

María de las Mercedes de Orleans was Andalusian, sweet and fragile. She was seventeen when they married and eighteen when she died, five months later. Legend has it that the king never fully recovered: that at a gathering, years later, he recited from memory to chronicler Vicente Barrantes the verses he had written about the queen's death, and confessed that Mercedes had been the only woman he had truly loved.

For her, the first Trufas de la paz were made: delicate truffles covered with very thin almond flakes. They were the first commission.

María Cristina of Habsburg, the queen who endured

When a king became a widower young, cabinets moved quickly. Three years after Mercedes' death, Alfonso married María Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine, Archduchess of Austria. More than a passionate marriage, it was a tactic for dynastic continuity; however, it was she who sustained the throne when he died. She ruled as regent for seventeen years and raised Alfonso XIII amidst the storm.

For María Cristina, the Fig Delights: a tender paste of Extremaduran fig filled with praline, made piece by piece, by hand, one by one. The fig, that patient and discreet fruit, that ripens slowly and sweetens with moderation.

Elena Sanz; the passionate love that does not appear in official portraits

Elena Sanz was a contralto, Andalusian, dark-haired, intense. She sang in the great theaters of Europe and left the most serious men of her time speechless. Benito Pérez Galdós called her "the enchanting compatriot." Emilio Castelar, president of Congress during the First Republic, wrote of her: "Whoever has seen Elena Sanz in their life will never forget her.” A slightly older contralto, protected by her mother Isabel II, whose destiny placed and displaced her in Alfonso's life until, as a widowed king, they met again. They were together for almost four years, and had two children out of wedlock.

For his encounters with her, the Nocturnas were made: dark chocolate bases with almond, dark as Elena's hair, designed to be enjoyed while the court slept.

The poet, the king, and the cocoa that came from the Philippines

Behind each of those commissions were two hands and a bridge.

The first were those of Doña Carmina Cuesta, owner of a small chocolate workshop in Badajoz. It is said in the house that the first time she received the king's order, she didn't sleep for weeks: if she failed, it would be her ruin; if she succeeded, her legend. And she succeeded.

The bridge was Vicente Barrantes Moreno (Badajoz, 1829 – Pozuelo de Alarcón, 1898), an Extremaduran writer, chronicler, and bibliographer, a personal friend of the monarch, a man of literary gatherings and verses, and secretary of the General Government of the Philippines. It was Barrantes who had Filipino cocoa brought to Badajoz, and knowing Carmina's craft, he suggested to the king that the sweets he wanted to give – to his queen, to his lover, or to her memory – be made there.

Thus, this house was born. A king paired in three different ways – who knows how many of them in love – the poet who acted as a messenger, cocoa that crossed half the world, and a provincial chocolatier who understood, before anyone else, that chocolate serves to say what words dare not.

Tradition has it that, years later, Doña Carmina received the title of La Real Confitería Española. We continue to carry it with the same respect and, above all, with the same recipe.

What we do today

The Trufas de la paz, the Fig Delights, and the Nocturnas are still made as they were then: cocoa of origin, almond, Extremaduran fig, some time, and many hands.

Every box that leaves La Real Confitería Española carries within it a 19th-century love story. If they are given to you, pay attention to who and why: in this house, sweets always say something.

 

 

 

"Craftsmanship is the desire to do a job well, for the pleasure of doing it." 

 

We make our fig chocolates by hand-selecting each one and coating them with premium dark chocolate.