María Cristina was born in Seville, a city in which her parents were forced to live in order to stay away from any palace intrigue in the court of Isabel II of Spain, her mother's sister. [4][5][6] She was the third daughter of the nine offspring of her parents, but of them only three would survive childhood, apart from Maria Cristina: Marie Isabelle, Maria Amalia, Maria de las Mercedes, and Antonio. She was baptized Maria Cristina Francisca de Paula Antonietta, after one of her godfathers, her uncle-grandfather Francisco de Paula, Duke of Cadiz, and maternal grandmother, Queen Maria Christina, whose name was imposed.
In 1878, her sister Mercedes, who was eight years younger than Maria Cristina, contracted a marriage with her cousin, Alfonso XII of Spain. The union, celebrated for love and not for political reasons, would help seal the personal gap between Isabel II and her sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, Cristina's mother. The happiness of the couple, and of the whole family, was shattered a few months later when Queen Mercedes died of typhus. [7]
The death of the Queen plunged the Royal Family into deep sadness; Alfonso XII was especially heartbroken to have been widowed at only 20 years of age, but since he lacked an heir, the King was soon forced to look for a second wife. For a few months he courted Maria Cristina, who was willing to replace her late sister, but it soon became clear that she was suffering from tuberculosis.
Maria Cristina died at the age of 26 on 28 April 1879 in her native Seville. She was buried in the Pantheon of the Infantes of the Monastery of San Lorenzo of El Escorial. Her cousin, Alfonso XII, married on 28 November that year with the Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, and would have with her three children, Mercedes, named after María Cristina's sister the late Queen, Maria Teresa, and Alfonso, the future King of Spain.
