Alfred Holmes - Early Life

Early Life

Holmes was a second generation Gibraltarian, born in Gibraltar to Gibraltarian parents Arthur Frederick Holmes and Mercedes Carrara. His father had been previously married and fathered five children from that relationship. Following the death of his wife, he married Mercedes who was later to be Alfred's mother. Alfred was to be the only child out of that relationship as his mother died when he was just three years old. His father later remarried one final time, fathering a further five children, giving Alfred a total of ten half siblings.

In 1954 he married Spanish domestic worker Leonor Corbacho Velasco, a young lady from in Valverde del Fresno (Cáceres). He had previously met her in La Línea de la Concepción, the Spanish municipality on the other side of the Gibraltar frontier, where she resided at the time. They went on to have two children, Maria de las Mercedes in 1955 and Edward Maximo in 1962.