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Among the Nazis, fascists and collaborationists who sought refuge in Franco's Spain at the end of the Second World War, without a doubt, the one who aroused the most interest was
the Belgian ultranationalist leader Léon Degrelle
(Bouillon, 1906). Catholic, excellent orator, decorated by Hitler when he put his party, Rex, at the service of the Nazis, and sentenced to death
in absentia
as a traitor to his country, he lived happily in Spain, protected, and
at the same time heavily watched
, by the police. of the regime. And thanks to the monitoring that he was subjected to, many of his steps have been followed since he landed in a spectacular way on May 8, 1945 on the La Concha beach in San Sebastián until his death in Malaga, in 1994. .
In Bajo el manto del Caudillo (Alianza), the historian José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez has reconstructed his stay in Spain, the different residences he had (some luxurious,
such as the La Carlina estate
, on the outskirts of the Sevillian town of Constantina) and the (at least) five women with whom he shared his busy life at some point.
With the first of them, Marie-Paule Lemay, daughter of a wealthy Belgian industrialist in the mining and cement sector, he married in 1932, when he
was still an active activist in Catholic Action
, and with her he had four daughters and a son. Since Degrelle arrived in Spain, he barely saw her again and she asked him for divorce in 1958. By then, Lemay had spent five years in prison, accused of having collaborated with Nazism, in addition to paying a fine of 14 million francs. and having lost part of the family business, which was nationalized. However, the most difficult moment for the couple would have been, explains
Rodríguez Jiménez
, a murky episode to which two authors refer. "While he was at the front," explains the historian, "Marie-Paule Lemay had an affair with an Austrian Luftwaffe officer whose body was found shot in the back of the head shortly after Degrelle's stay in Brussels. Although a judge SS tried to frame Degrelle, the case was not solved.
The Belgian politician (who published several books in Spain about his experience at the front) was always very interested in his children, to whom he
had paid very little attention
during the War , coming to Spain so that they could learn his version of what happened. . And so it was, three of his daughters were married here and his only son died shortly after arriving in a motorcycle accident. He was buried in Constantine. His wife never forgave him and she reproached him for his death, which is why she sent divorce papers with one of her daughters, Anne. It was a request, she later explained, "
especially from the Lemay family
, who wanted to protect her from any maneuver by her husband to take economic advantage of her marital marriage."
And on many occasions, Degrelle had financial problems that he was able to overcome
thanks to his friends in Spain
, especially Serrano Suñer (Franco's brother-in-law) and the Count of Mayalde, who had been general director of Security, ambassador to Germany and, between 1952 and 1965, mayor of Madrid. And it is no coincidence that the other women with whom she had relationships had comfortable financial means.
He met two of them on his trips to Spain, the first in the early 1930s and then during the last months of the Civil War. With
Clara Stauffer Loewe
(pioneer of skiing and swimming in Spain, active member of the Women's Section and the Winter Help, polyglot, cultured and daughter of Konrad Stauffer, Alfredo Mahou's first brewmaster, and Julia Loewe, daughter of Enrique Loewe , who in 1848 had founded
the very famous fur house
in Spain
), always maintained a deep intimate relationship and friendship and, in difficult times, such as when he was about to be kidnapped by some Nazi hunters, he settled in his Madrid home in Galileo. , 14. During the Franco regime, Clarita, who was born in Germany in 1904, stood out for
creating a network to help Nazis and fascists
who arrived in Spain, either to settle or to make the leap to America.
Clara StaufferCOURSED BY JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ JIMÉNEZ
He met María Luisa Narváez Macías (Madrid, 1912), from a noble and monarchical family during his stay in Spain during the Civil War, since he was her interpreter and stayed in her parents' palace of the Águilas, in Ávila. , the Dukes of Valencia, a title that she inherited (along with that of Countess of Cañada Alta,
Viscountess of Aliatar and Marchioness of Cartago
) although she liked to be called
the Red Duchess
. After July 18, Luisa entered the service of Franco and was assistant to the monarchist general Alfredo Kindelán, with whom she performed various functions, including intelligence work.
The Duchess of Valencia, known as the 'red duchessCOURSED BY JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ JIMÉNEZ
Hedonist, drinker, fond of horse riding and owner of a renowned stable, little by little she opposed the regime in favor of "
HM King Don Juan III the Inevitable
" and came to lead a Juanist group called Monarchic Advancement. Arrested for clandestine activities, she spent several months in jail in the late 1940s.
The Duchess of Valencia would later write Degrelle m'a dit..., to give her version of those years and come out in defense of "an extraordinary man whom unforeseen circumstances allowed me to get to know up close and who himself
experienced great
historical events up close."
". And if she did not reveal in her book "the people who had participated in Degrelle's escape," nor did she clarify "the places where the Belgian had hidden." writes Rodríguez Jiménez, "it was not because of laziness, but because, after threatening to spread that information to the Internews agency if she was not released from the Ventas women's prison, she had promised to remain silent."
SECOND WIFE
At the beginning of the 1950s, when she was 44 years old and he was 46, Degrelle met the Parisian Hélène Cornette, a collaborator of the Third Reich, sentenced in absentia in 1948 to
five years in prison
, a fine of 100,000 francs and confiscation, for the benefit of the nation, its present and future assets. Married since the 1930s to police officer Pedro Urraca, she and Degrelle shared "a similar past, with the memory of World War II, their experiences as defeated and condemned and their ties to Belgium, and they shared the political diagnosis of
the danger that it meant." the USSR
. Their romance, although seasonal, would last several years", during which she regularly visited the La Carlina estate.
However, "either she decided that that relationship had already gone too far for a foreigner, although with a Spanish passport, exiled and who
wanted to preserve the benefits of married life
, or he had already started a relationship, with another woman, daughter from an antique dealer, something that neither his daughters, nor Clarita nor Hélène liked at all".
Degrelle and the French Hélène Cornete in 'La Carlina'COURSED BY JOSÉ LUIS RODRÍGUEZ JIMÉNEZ
She was Jeanne Brevet, niece of Joseph Darnand, "executed for criminal acts committed when he was head of the French Militia and
collaborator of the Gestapo and the SS
, and who lived separately from the journalist and writer Henry Charboneau." When in 1962 he had to leave La Carlina, which ended up at the Caja San Fernando in Seville, he settled with her in his luxuriously furnished penthouse in Madrid, where he continued writing some of her works.
In 1984, when Marie-Paule Lemay died, they married and, soon after, went
to live in Malaga with her daughter
. She died there on March 31, 1994.