In 1946, Leonida's brother, Prince Irakly, married King Alfonso XIII's niece, Princess Doña María de las Mercedes de Baviera y Borbon (1911–1953), obtaining Vladimir's recommendation that the Spanish pretender, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, accept the marriage as dynastic, which he did not. The Count of Barcelona, then Head of the Royal House of Spain, considered the issue of this marriage to be disqualified from the Spanish succession. The only son of this marriage was sponsored at his baptism by the Count of Barcelona but the latter's refusal to recognize his god-son as a Spanish dynast led to the Bagrations' alienation from the Spanish Royal Family according to Guy Stair Sainty. In 1948 Vladimir, relying on his own earlier advice on the Bagrations' historically royal status, chose to wed Leonida "dynastically" in Lausanne, Switzerland.