Victor (son)

Víctor de la Serna Jr. is a Spanish journalist whose work and connections place him among the intermediaries assisting European collaborators and fugitives from Nazi justice in postwar Argentina. As editor-in-chief of Informaciones, he appears in public as a newspaper man; in private correspondence and at a meeting with Juan Perón, he is linked to efforts to select refugees for escape and conceal fugitives’ passage abroad.

Identity and Public Position

The son of a journalist of the same name and grandson of the writer Concha Espina, Víctor is editor-in-chief of Informaciones when he arrives in Buenos Aires from Madrid on November 6. A photographer for the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación records him descending the aircraft steps. He is less famous than Horst Fuldner, but not unknown to Allied observers, who regard him as fascist and pro-Nazi like his father.

His acquaintance with the other guests at Perón’s meeting dates from their years in Spain. That social familiarity gives him access to people whose political and practical concerns extend well beyond the public roles they occupy. After Pierre Daye leaves, Víctor maintains extensive correspondence with him. Their ostensibly ordinary discussion of exporting a car uses a transparent code: the vehicle is a fugitive they intend to help cross the Atlantic.

Argentina and the Escape Network

Víctor’s arrival in Buenos Aires brings him into a gathering convened by Rodolfo Freude under the pretext of hearing Perón explain his “third position.” Perón presents himself as opposed to both Marxism and liberalism, and as the leader of a popular movement transcending the left-right divide. But the meeting’s practical purpose soon becomes clear: Perón wants to receive civilians and military personnel, technicians, and scientists connected to the Third Reich, hoping to make Argentina a major power. He anticipates that a future conflict between the West and the Soviet Union could turn today’s discredited Nazis into tomorrow’s useful allies.

Freude invites Víctor to the meeting, giving the journalist a place among a group that includes people engaged in helping fugitives. The invitation is not incidental to the larger operation. In a letter dated February 25, 1948, Daye asks Víctor to prepare lists, organized by nationality, of political refugees in Spain and to indicate who most urgently needs to be saved. The refugees, Daye specifies, need not apply themselves: the organizers will handle the arrangements. He recommends Clara Stauffer and two other trusted associates to carry out the work.

Víctor’s correspondence and the refugee lists show different sides of the same function. The letters conceal individual fugitives behind the language of commercial transport; the lists turn a broader population of refugees in Spain into cases selected for rescue. His role links Spanish contacts to the Argentine reception effort without making him its sole architect or operator.

Connections and Consequences

At a gathering at La Granja, Víctor and his father move through the assembled circle of Spanish and foreign guests with particular ease. They know that Adrián Gallardo has returned to Spain and ask Messerschmidt to introduce them to him; other Spanish guests then approach Gallardo as well. The episode places Víctor within the personal networks that connect political sympathizers, former officials, and escape-network figures.

His ties to Daye also illuminate how those personal connections could carry practical consequences across national borders. A coded exchange about an “exported” car could disguise assistance to a fugitive, while the requested lists provided a way to decide who should be moved and how urgently. The network’s ostensibly administrative language—nationality lists, applications, transport—serves a more consequential purpose: arranging refuge for people whom the Allies regarded as fascists or pro-Nazi.

Narrative and Historical Significance

The novel presents Víctor at the intersection of public respectability and clandestine assistance. His newspaper position is visible; the correspondence that recasts a car as a fugitive, and the request to identify refugees for rescue, disclose the work behind that respectable surface. He is neither merely a guest at Perón’s ideological gathering nor only a correspondent: the evidence connects him to the practical selection and movement of people seeking escape.

That connection is part of the novel’s broader account of the Stauffer network and Francoist Spain as a refuge and staging ground for fugitives. The book distinguishes documented historical material from its invented characters and describes Clara Stauffer as a central historical figure in the network. Víctor’s actions help make that hidden system legible: its operations depended not only on prominent organizers, but also on intermediaries who could translate private friendships and routine-looking correspondence into routes of escape.