Aline Griffith, Countess of Romanones - Biography

Biography

Born in Pearl River, New York, Miss Griffith (as she then was) was working as a model when she was recruited by the OSS and sent to Spain, where she later met and married her husband. According to Elizabeth McIntosh's book "she started out in Madrid in the X-2 code room in 1943, on call night and day to encipher messages. She also handled a small agent net that spied on the private secretary of a minister in the Spanish government. Most of her exciting work was done after hours when she developed an extensive social life, reporting on the gossip she had overheard after a night of partying, often with Spanish aristocracy." She married Luis Figueroa y Perez de Guzmán el Bueno, Count of Quintanilla, in 1947; they had three children:

• Álvaro de Figueroa y Griffith, 10. count of Quintanilla, 3. count of Romanones, (born 21.02.1949), married Lucila Domecq Williams.
• Luis de Figueroa y Griffith, 11. count of Quintanilla, (born 1950), married HSH princess Theresia zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, and later with María Inés Bárbara Márquez y Osorio
• Miguel de Figueroa y Griffith

The couple later became the Count and Countess of Romanones upon the death of her husband's grandfather, Alvaro Figueroa. She currently lives at her homes in Madrid and Pascualete, the latter of which is a country estate of her husband's family, which she has painstakingly restored.

In 2009, she was interviewed for the documentary film Garbo: The Spy about Juan Pujol, a Catalan double agent who supported Britain during World War II.