On 6 November 1870, Amadeo, Duke of Aosta, was elected king of Spain, but General Prim, on leaving the chamber of the Cortes on 28 December, was shot by unknown assassins and died two days later. Prim had searched all the European courts of the time trying to find a monarch who was not opposed to being democratically elected. He is quoted as saying that “looking for a democratic monarch in Europe is like trying to find an atheist in heaven”. Three days after Prim’s death, King Amadeo I swore in the presence of the corpse to observe the new Spanish constitution.
According to W.O. Cavenagh (1898), writing for The Genealogical Magazine, Juan Prim was a descendant of John Prim, of Johnswell, county Kilkenny (d. 1755), an Irish descendant of a family of Dutch settlers originally surnamed Prime, established in England during the reign of Elizabeth I and a branch of which relocated to Ireland during the reign of Charles I.