| Prince Pedro Gastão | |
| Birth Date: | 19 February 1913 |
| Birth Place: | Eu, Seine-Maritime, France |
| Death Place: | Villamanrique de la Condesa, Seville, Spain |
| Succession: | Head of the Imperial House of Brazil (disputed) |
| Reign: | 29 January 1940 – 27 December 2007 |
| Successor: | Prince Pedro Carlos |
| House: | Orléans-Braganza |
| Father: | Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará |
| Mother: | Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz |
| Issue: | Prince Pedro Carlos Princess Maria da Glória Prince Afonso Prince Manuel Princess Cristina Prince Francisco |
| Full Name: | Pedro de Alcântara Gastão João Maria Filipe Lourenço Humberto Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança |
Pedro Gastão of Orléans-Braganza (19 February 191327 December 2007)[1] was the Head of the Petrópolis branch of the House of Orléans-Braganza and a claimant to the defunct Brazilian throne in opposition to the Vassouras branch claim led by his cousins Princes Pedro Henrique and Luiz.[2]
Pedro Gastão was born during the exile of the Brazilian Imperial Family, being the second child and first son of Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará, sometime heir to the throne of the Empire of Brazil, and Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz. Never having accepted his father's 1908 renunciation as valid, he actively claimed the Brazilian throne from his father's death in 1940 until his own in 2007.
Pedro Gastão was also uncle to the pretenders to the thrones of Portugal (Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza) and France (Henri, Count of Paris) and grandfather to the heir apparent to the defunct Yugoslav throne (Philip, Hereditary Prince of Yugoslavia).
Pedro Gastão, whose name was after his father and grandfather, was born on 19 February 1913 in France in the Château d'Eu, at the homonymous town of Eu, Seine-Maritime, where the Brazilian Imperial Family was installed since 1905. His father, Pedro de Alcântara, Prince of Grão-Pará, was the older son of Isabel, Princess Imperial of Brazil, and had been expected from birth to eventually inherit the Imperial Throne of Brazil naturally. His mother, Countess Elisabeth Dobrzensky of Dobrzenicz, was a member of an old Bohemian noble family. He was brother to Isabelle, Countess of Paris, Maria Francisca, Duchess of Braganza, Prince João Maria and Princess Teresa Teodora.
Pedro Gastão spent his youth in Europe, largely at his family's Parisian home in the Boulogne sur Seine suburb: "I have very good memories of my grandparents [...] In exile in France I was always brought up thinking of Brazil not France or Portugal."[3] In 1922 he saw Brazil for the first time, two years after the repeal of the Banishment Law against the Imperial Family. The family was repatriated and settled at the Imperial Palace of Grão-Pará, at the town of Petrópolis, where Pedro Gastão attended the Notre Dame de Sion school which rented his father's Palace of Petrópolis.
When Pedro Gastão was born, it had been five years since his father had signed the instrument of resignation, by which he theoretically would have renounced the rights of succession to the throne of Brazil for himself and his offspring. The document was accepted by the Princess Imperial and by most royalists.
A few years before his death Pedro Gastão's father Prince Pedro de Alcântara told a Brazilian newspaper:
"My renunciation was not valid for many reasons: besides, it was not a hereditary renunciation."[4]
Following the death of his father, and supported by Infante Alfonso, Duke of Calabria and Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, Prince Pedro Gastão declared himself Head of the Imperial Family of Brazil.[4] His position was supported by Francisco Morato, law professor at the University of São Paulo, who concluded the resignation of Pedro Gastão's father was not a valid legal or monarchical act.[4] Professor Paulo Napoleão Nogueira da Silva in the 1990s published a report saying that the resignation of his father was invalid under all possible aspects of Brazilian Law.[4]
He represented a rival claim to that of his cousin's son, Prince Luiz of Orléans-Braganza, to be the heir of the deposed Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, despite the renunciation signed by his father in 1908 when he married, without dynastic approval, a Bohemian noblewoman.[5]
Pedro Gastão died aged 94 on 27 December 2007.
His dynastic claim to the head of the imperial house is currently assumed by his male grandson Pedro Tiago de Orléans e Bragança (born 12 January 1979).[6]
He married Princess Maria de la Esperanza of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1914–2005), a daughter of Prince Carlos of the Two Sicilies, Infante of Spain and Princess Louise of Orléans a maternal aunt of Juan Carlos I King of Spain, on 18 December 1944 in Seville, Spain, and had six children:[7]
The prince ran the Companhia Imobiliária de Petrópolis (Petrópolis Imobiliary Company), that collected the laudemium fee, until the end of the 20th century. Still in the mountain town of Petrópolis, in the 1950s, he acquired the newspaper, founded in 1902, and currently managed by his son, Prince Francisco. In 1954 he came to an agreement with his siblings for the definitive sale of the Château d'Eu to the Prefecture of Eu.[10] [11]
In the early 1990s, during the referendum in which the Brazilian people should opt for the monarchy or the republic, Pedro Gastão was one of the most engaged in the campaign for the monarchy. But with the defeat of the cause, in advanced age, the prince eventually left the country and disallowed the initiative of some of his supporters to found a monarchist party in Brazil. He retired to his wife's property in Villamanrique-de-la-Condessa, near Seville, Spain.[12]
The couple's last years of life were spent at the princess's estate, where both passed away. Princess Maria de la Esperanza died before him, in 2005, leaving him only with his caretakers and being constantly visited by two of his children who lived in Seville. Prince Pedro Gastão died in the early hours of 27 December 2007, at the age of 94, and was buried the following day, in the chapel of Villamanrique de la Condesa. He received a State funeral with the presence of the Spanish monarchs.[13]