5 - A Death Foretold (1932–1938)

Summary

Vallejo clearly took an enormous risk when he flouted the law and returned to Paris, despite the court order. But this time he was lucky. Vallejo was told that he would be allowed to remain in France if he desisted from political activity and reported to the Prefecture monthly. On 22 March 1932 Vallejo wrote to Gerardo Diego and told him that they had found a buyer for the apartment, and that they intended to sell up and return to Madrid the following month in order to pay back the loan he had generously extended them. He gave his work address, Avenue de l'Opéra, as his domicile though this would be the last time he used this address.

It is clear that, during the next few years, Vallejo decided to keep a low profile in order not to endanger his right to stay in France. But the militancy of his Madrid days sometimes caught up with him. He signed a statement dated 8 August 1932, published in the Madrid newspaper Luz on 12 August, denouncing the Peruvian president Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro, who had ousted August B. Leguía from Peru's highest office in a coup d'état on 22 August 1930, since he ‘desarrolla la más brutal represión contra los trabajadores principalmente y contra todos los partidos' (is carrying out the most brutal repression of the workers above all and against all parties). Quite apart from politics, though, Vallejo needed to solve his economic problems.