Vichy

Vichy is presented as the seat of Pierre Laval’s collaborationist government and as a point in the route by which wartime collaboration spills into postwar escape and impunity. Its significance in the novel is less that of a developed setting than of a political marker: Laval’s authority in France leads into his arrival in Francoist Spain, where his fate contrasts with that of other fugitives sheltered there.

Vichy and Laval’s Political Position

Pierre Laval is identified as the head of the collaborationist government of Vichy from April 1942 until the Allied liberation of France. His position made him a prominent figure in the network of European collaborators discussed by Manuel Arroyo Benítez, Juan Negrín, and Pablo de Azcárate. The reference to Vichy therefore locates Laval within the political machinery of collaboration, rather than treating his later flight as an isolated act.

From Vichy to Spain

Laval reached Spain on 2 May 1945, a few days before Léon Degrelle. Unlike Degrelle’s emergency landing on the Basque coast, Laval’s arrival in Barcelona was comparatively comfortable and had been facilitated by José Félix de Lequerica, Francoist Spain’s foreign minister, with whom Laval had formed a friendship when Lequerica served as Spanish ambassador to Vichy. The route from Vichy to Spain thus runs through personal and official connections as well as across a national border.

A Different Fate from Other Fugitives

On 30 July 1945, under pressure from French authorities and wary of offending the victorious Allies, Franco handed Laval over. He was tried for treason, sentenced to death, and shot in mid-October. The novel presents this surrender as the beginning and end of Franco’s cooperation with Allied justice: Laval was extradited, while Degrelle remained protected in Spain despite repeated Belgian demands. Vichy consequently anchors a contrast between a collaborator who was surrendered under immediate diplomatic pressure and fugitives whom the Spanish regime later shielded through false identities and Spanish nationality.