Ante Paveltić

Ante Pavelić is presented as a wanted Croatian fascist leader living under the protection available to prominent fugitives in Francoist Spain. He does not dominate the novel through speeches or public action: instead, his guarded appearance at a gathering in La Granja, the men who shield him, and his private exchange with Clara Stauffer make him a concentrated figure of concealed power. For Manuel Arroyo, who attends under the assumed identity of Adrián Gallardo, identifying Pavelić turns a social occasion into an intelligence opportunity—and a danger that cannot safely be written down.

Identity and Background

At the gathering hosted by Herr Messerschmidt, Pavelić is not initially named. Manuel notices a tall, military-looking man, apparently around sixty, set apart from the other guests. Large round-rimmed glasses, an old-fashioned broad moustache with upturned ends, and a goatee give him a deliberately antiquated appearance; the disguise is so carefully composed that it betrays itself as camouflage. Three men remain around him, leaving only one at a time, and converse with him in a Slavic language that Manuel judges is probably Croatian. The language, the tight security, and the man’s conspicuous isolation prompt Manuel’s suspicion before he has confirmation.

Months later, Manuel learns that his intuition was right: the guarded guest was Ante Pavelić, leader of the Croatian Ustaše and one of Europe’s three most-wanted war criminals. The delayed confirmation matters. At the party, Pavelić’s identity is not announced to the room, and the narrative lets the reader share Manuel’s process of recognition: visual detail and controlled movement first, the name and political significance afterward. His concealment is not an absence from the postwar order but a sign of the protection that order affords.

The La Granja Gathering

Manuel attends the gathering while gathering information about the people protected by the Francoist escape network. The gathering’s guests include notorious collaborators who use their authentic names, apparently confident that the regime will shield them. Pavelić, by contrast, remains socially withdrawn. Manuel tries to approach him as closely as he can on two occasions, enough to observe the guards and hear their language, but not enough to establish contact or learn directly what Pavelić is saying.

The party’s social surface repeatedly collides with its political reality. When Clara Stauffer and Johannes Bernhardt arrive, the guests divide between those eager to greet Clara and those waiting to shake Bernhardt’s hand. Meanwhile, Manuel continues watching Pavelić. He misses his new notebook, in which he has been recording what he learns, and regrets that the success of his social approach has produced so much information. The more names and connections he recognizes, the more perilous the assignment becomes.

As the evening proceeds, Clara disappears for several minutes with Guillermo and then returns with him to greet Adrián. She subsequently crosses the garden to the Croatian table, embraces Pavelić for several seconds, sits beside him, and remains there through the rest of the gathering. Near midnight, while the other guests stand with raised arms and sing the Horst Wessel song after Léon Degrelle’s toast, Clara stays seated, absorbed in conversation with Pavelić. She occasionally writes in a small notebook; Pavelić rubs his forehead with an expression of genuine concern. Their conduct sets them apart from the public ritual around them and suggests an urgent private business without revealing its content.

Security, Secrecy, and the Escape Network

Pavelić’s protection is visible in the arrangements around his body. His three companions watch him in shifts, and at the end of the party one of them rides beside him. When Clara offers to take Pavelić and his men toward the village, the guests are divided between the front and back of the car: Adrián and Guillermo are invited to squeeze in beside the chauffeur, while Clara sits in the rear beside Pavelić and one of his bodyguards. During the short journey, Manuel longs to hear the Croatian speak, but only Clara’s voice fills the car. Neither Pavelić nor his guard makes any visible farewell when Clara drops the two Spaniards at the inn.

Clara uses the journey to propose Spanish conversation groups for the foreign guests, including Croats and other Europeans. The suggestion turns the party’s casual sociability into a practical means of bringing foreign residents together through trusted hosts. Manuel and Guillermo both offer to help. In the months that follow, the plan becomes part of the network’s routine: Manuel attends Spanish conversations at Ingrid’s home twice a week, where Pavelić’s bodyguards are among the participants, while Guillermo attends on different days at Amparo Priego’s home. On Saint Nicholas Day, hosts, pupils, and teachers meet at Clara’s home at Galileo 14. The language lessons create an ordinary-looking setting for continued contact with the protected foreigners, including the men guarding Pavelić.

The sequence also shows the limits of Manuel’s access. At the party he is close enough to identify Pavelić and observe Clara’s private attention to him, yet he cannot safely make a written record of what he has seen. His fear is registered through a physical warning: just as he is about to start listing names, nationalities, and ranks in the bathroom, a shiver makes him stop. He trusts his memory instead, puts the unused notebook back in his jacket, checks his appearance in the mirror, and returns to the garden. The notebook remains intact, but the intelligence has been gathered at the cost of making himself more vulnerable.

Narrative Significance

Pavelić’s small, tightly controlled presence links the escape network’s social world to the larger politics of impunity. He is recognized not in a courtroom or official office, but at a private gathering whose guests appear confident that Franco’s regime will protect them. The contrast between his concealed identity and the guests’ use of their real names underscores that concealment is selective: the fugitives can live openly within a community that keeps scrutiny at bay, while their security still depends on guards, intermediaries, and discretion.

The novel does not disclose the substance of Pavelić and Clara’s conversation at La Granja. Instead, it gives the reader evidence of its privacy and apparent seriousness: the embrace, the sustained meeting at the Croatian table, Clara’s notes, Pavelić’s worried gesture, and the carefully arranged departure. That restraint keeps Manuel’s mission at the center. Pavelić matters as both a person he must identify and a measure of the system he is trying to penetrate—one in which a highly sought war criminal can remain surrounded by protectors, while an infiltrator must carry what he learns in memory rather than on paper.