Legión Valona

The Legión Valona is the Belgian volunteer formation in which Alfonso Navarro serves after declining to return to Spain, placing him on a parallel military path to Adrián Gallardo and bringing their rivalry into the final defense of Berlin. In the novel, the legion is not developed as an institution in its own right so much as a link in a chain of foreign volunteer forces and assumed identities that converges on the city.

Formation and wartime context

The novel identifies the Legión Valona as the Walloon counterpart to the Flemish Legion, founded by Léon Degrelle in southern Belgium. When Franco dissolved the Blue Legion in March 1944, Degrelle appealed to Spanish volunteers who preferred to keep fighting rather than go home. Navarro accepted that choice and joined the Walloon formation, while Gallardo had taken the corresponding route into the Flemish Legion.

Volunteers and the Berlin defense

Robert Collard is identified as a Belgian volunteer in the Legión Valona, assigned to the defense of Berlin. In the final phase of the war he accompanies Gallardo and other SS men; Collard recounts Navarro’s path to Gallardo, who recognizes how closely it resembles his own. The two Spaniards have reached the same besieged city through parallel decisions to remain in the German war effort, but through rival national volunteer formations.

Narrative significance

The legion’s presence makes the last convergence of the two men more than a coincidence of location: their opposing routes have run through allied volunteer units before bringing them face to face in Berlin. Gallardo initially treats their reunion as an accident, only to reconsider that understanding after meeting Agneta Müller. The Legión Valona thus helps connect the broader European volunteer system to the novel’s intimate story of rivalry, chance, and contested identity.