# María Elena de Cárdena is the new Marchioness of Campo Florido

**Date:** 02/20/2020

The Spanish Ministry of Justice ordered the issuance of the letter of succession for the marquisate of Campo Florido in the name of a nonagenarian Cuban woman last Friday, November 14, following a lawsuit initiated in 2017 by the Caribbean lady, according to the newspaper El Mundo.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of María Elena de Cárdena, 98 years old, in November 2019, thus stripping the noble title from Alicia Alcocer Koplowitz, sister of the current president of Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas and middle of the three daughters of businesswoman Esther Koplowitz.

Alicia, 48 years old, received this marquisate in May 2003 through a transfer from her mother, who had inherited it, in turn, from her uncle José Arturo Romero de Juseu y Armenteros.

The Koplowitz family descends —through the maternal line— from a powerful family from Havana, which owned plantations and had family ties with Miguel Cárdenas y Santa Cruz, first marquis of Campo Florido, to whom Ferdinand VII granted this title in 1826.

Whereas María Elena, of Sevillian mother and born in Cuba, emigrated with her family to Miami in the early 1960s to flee the Revolution. Today, she has become the greatest "noble scourge" of the Koplowitz sisters and their descendants. Above all, because she also threatens to take the marquisate of Bellavista, a title granted by King Amadeo I to Gabriel de Cárdenas, alderman of Havana.

This catastrophe has its origin in the great and noble Cuban families, whose successors fled the Island after 1959, occupied with saving their money and neglected to delve into their genealogy to recover the titles of their ancestors. Many of which remained vacant. What allowed great Spanish fortunes, such as the Koplowitz, to achieve their objectives.