Tim Parfitt's Blog, page 3

Letter from Spain #47

Different cities come into their own during different months of the year. For Madrid it is May. In London, I’d say mid-June to early July. Edinburgh, August. New York, September. Munich, October … and so on.

I love Barcelona in April. I’m probably biased because I also celebrate my birthday in April. This year I strung it out, which is why I didn’t get round to posting anything on here last weekend. Sorry, but these things happen.

The weather here in April is normally perfect - not too hot, not too cold - daylight hours are much longer, restaurant terraces and chiringuito beach bars are opening, people look happier than usual as spring turns into early summer and outdoor activities kick off again.

These include Sant Jordi’s Day on 23 April, when everyone exchanges a rose and a book, with every town and city across Catalonia filled with stands set up to sell both (more on that below). It also includes the annual Trofeo Conde de Godó tennis tournament at the Reial Club de Tenis Barcelona, a sporting and social feast - that has just concluded this afternoon with Casper Ruud beating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final.

April in Barcelona normally also sees Barça moving triumphantly from the quarter-finals of the UEFA Champions League towards the semi-finals, but PSG put a stop to that this year and so we won’t go into it. Worse, if Barça lose away to Real Madrid in this evening’s ‘Clasico’ at the Bernabéu, they can kiss goodbye to any remaining hope of winning La Liga, too, if they haven’t already done so.

But Barcelona’s best month has always been April - okay, or September - just before or after the mass tourism - which is a double-edged sword for Spain and an issue that will need resolving before long.

Only yesterday, over 55,000 of the 2.2 million population of the Canary Islands took to the streets to protest against the ‘unsustainable’ mass tourism model that saw 16 million tourists visit the archipelago last year … over seven times the population.

They rallied under the slogan of ‘Canarias tiene un límite’ - ‘The Canary Islands have a limit’ and ‘Canarias se Agota’ - ‘The Canaries Have Had Enough’ - with the protests called by around 20 social and environmental groups including Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologists in Action and Friends of the Earth.

They want the authorities to limit the number of visitors and have proposed introducing an eco tax to protect the environment, a moratorium on tourism and to clamp down on the sale of properties to non-residents.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic brought the global travel industry to its knees in 2020, protest movements against mass tourism were already active in Spain and especially in Barcelona - with anti-tourist graffiti popping up around the city, telling ‘guiris’ to go home.

After travel restrictions were lifted, tourism surged with Spain welcoming a record 85.1 million foreign visitors last year. Catalonia, including Barcelona, followed by the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands were the top destinations.

The number of foreign visitors in 2023 surpassed the 83.5 million who went to Spain in 2019, the year before the pandemic ruled out most leisure travel.

With short-term tourist rentals pushing up prices and forcing many locals out of their neighbourhoods, there’s been legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals in recent years not only in Barcelona, but Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid and San Sebastián, too, with varying degrees of success.

In 2023, activists on Mallorca put up fake signs with messages such as ‘beware of dangerous jellyfish’ and ‘caution, falling rocks’ in a bid to prevent the island’s beaches from being packed full of tourists.

While Seville has been considering charging non-residents a fee to enter its landmark Plaza de España, the Barcelona authorities have removed a bus route popular with tourists from Google Maps to try to make more room for locals.

The 116 bus, which covers the Park Güell area of the city, has been removed from the recommended routes feature on the Google Maps app, in the hope that less tourists will be aware of it and there will be more seats available for locals.

Neighbourhood organisations had been protesting for years and were dubious that the measure would work, but it reportedly has been effective. It shows that it’s not just rental costs and access to housing that is affected by mass tourism - local infrastructure can also suffer and needs increasingly extreme measures to preserve it for local residents.

But while locals across Spain are increasingly blaming foreign tourists for a worsening quality of life in their home cities and towns, the tourist industry accounts for 12.8% of the country’s GDP and it also generates more than 2.6m jobs in Spain.

The country’s tourism sector is expected to post record revenues again in 2024, the Exceltur tourism association recently said, adding that it was concerned at growing anger in the country against ‘overtourism’.

It predicted that total tourism earnings will reach €202.65 billion this year, an 8.6% increase over the record set in 2023 which had already seen a spectacular rate of growth.

If confirmed, it will be the first time that tourism earnings in Spain - the world's second most visited country after France - will surpass 200 billion euros.

Most Spanish media report that the majority of Spaniards will never ‘bite the hand that feeds them’, but there is increasing consensus that authorities need to curb the ‘uncontrolled gentrification’ that’s transforming Spanish towns and cities and worsening the lives of those who live in them - and while many rural, central areas of the country remain abandoned.

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events

I also posted this on my Facebook profile, but we had a fantastic evening on Friday at the brilliant Backstory Bookshop in Barcelona with an event to celebrate the re-issue of ‘A Load of Bull’. Thanks to everyone who came along - to the brilliant Carrie Frais for presenting it all - to Familia Torres for generously keeping all our glasses filled with the superb white and pink Viña Esmeralda - and to the talented Gareth Lloyd-Evans for taking photos, some of which I am posting here! We definitely had a laugh, and I hope you laugh out loud reading the book (more details about it below) …

Forthcoming Events

For Sant Jordi - Tuesday 23 April - I am going to be signing copies of my books on a stand in La Rambla in Barcelona, alongside eight other local writers (see image below). We will be at the top of La Rambla (Plaza de Catalunya end), opposite Carrer de la Canuda, not far from the Canaletes fountain. I will be there from around 10.30am until 4.30pm and then I will also be in Sitges, signing books between 6pm - 7pm at the Welsh-Catalan Association stand on the main promenade (I’m a quarter Welsh!). If you are in Barcelona or Sitges on Tuesday, come by and say hello!

On Friday 20 September, I will be doing an event at the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop at the C/ Moratín 7 in Madrid. More details will follow in due course …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I also included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

Eighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has just been re-issued, with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook, and this time worldwide, in both formats. Bookshop distribution is underway but in the meantime you can order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #46

A recent survey that was carried out to coincide with World Happiness Day which is celebrated on 20 March, ranked the residents in my hometown of Sitges as the ‘happiest’ in Catalonia and 16th happiest across Spain.

I didn’t know it, but Spain as a country doesn’t normally fare well in the annual international ranking of the world’s happiest countries. To improve its position in the ‘World Happiness Index’, the town survey was carried out by the sugar group Azucarera, together with the consulting firm YouGov. Over 1,000 people participated in the study and 35 ‘happiest towns’ were chosen, with the Top 10 running order being Ronda, Nerja, Chipiona, Tarifa, Peñíscola, Santillana del Mar, San Vicente de la Barquera, Sanxenxo, Ribadesella and Zahara de los Atunes, followed by 25 other towns.

Among the list were three towns on the Catalan coast: Sitges, Salou and Cadaqués, ranked 16, 18 and 25 respectively.

The respondents highlighted Sitges for its ‘beauty, climate, festivals and activities’. It’s true that Sitges is beautiful and the ‘micro-climate’ here is normally ideal. We also have many festivals and activities … sometimes too many.

Today we’ve had the 66th annual Barcelona to Sitges Vintage Car Rally - and there are a few photos below of the cars on display in Sitges, after they arrived from Barcelona.

I actually took part in the rally 30 years ago, in March 1994. For some reason we’d got involved as co-sponsors to promote the Spanish edition of GQ magazine, which we were to launch in November that year. I say I ‘took part’ – but all I had to do was sit as a passenger in the back of a beautiful, open-top Bugatti, sipping cava yet feeling car-sick as the old vehicle slowly weaved and chugged its way along the winding Garraf coastal road from Barcelona to Sitges, for over an hour under a blazing sun.

Without wanting this to sound like Taki’s old ‘High Life’ Spectator column, the only other passenger in the chauffeur-driven vehicle was Prince Giovanni de Borbón Dos Sicilias.

Giovanni appears quite a bit in A Load of Bull (recently re-issued, see below!) and in an early chapter I describe him as follows:

He looked as regal as you can get. He had the long Bourbon aristocratic forehead, nose and teeth, all of which went on forever, and he was crowned with neatly trimmed, swept-back silver hair. He was tall, immaculately attired and sat at a modest round table hidden at the back of the reception area with nothing on it other than a small typewriter, one or two pencils, the International Herald Tribune, a cookery book, and couple of reference books such as Debrett’s and Who’s Who. He spoke any language you wanted him to - Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Polish or Russian - although he spoke to me, thank God, in perfect English, tinged with an American-Italian accent. And the very first thing he said to me was: ‘Now tell me, dear boy, why on earth would you leave England for Spain?’

Giovanni was born Jean Maria Casimir Prince of Bourbon-Two Sicilies in Warsaw in 1933. His late father was the uncle of the disgraced former king of Spain, Juan Carlos, who abdicated in 2014. And here’s something else for you: when poor Giovanni was a toddler, he was pushed forward at a ceremony somewhere (I don’t know where) to present a bouquet of flowers to Adolf Hitler …

Giovanni was our glorified ‘society editor’ at Ediciones Condé Nast in Spain. He was also a gifted gourmet and food writer for Spanish and Brazilian Vogue, as well as a connoisseur of all the finer things in life – a man with many stories to tell, yet rather selfishly we often used him to simply ‘open doors’.

For the veteran car rally he’d been wheeled out to officially signal the start of it all from outside the HQ of Barcelona City Council in the Plaça Sant Jaume – a sort of Spanish equivalent to a Prince Michael of Kent figure for the London-to-Brighton rally, I guess.

How times have changed in 30 years. The Catalans would be outraged if someone like Giovanni was invited to do that today. In fact, come to think of it, I imagine many of them were outraged about it back in 1994 … but they kept quiet about it.

The competition side of the rally is not based on it being a race or a measure of velocity, but the uniqueness of each vehicle’s age or appearance, as well as the costumes of the drivers and passengers to mirror the age and spirit of the time. Giovanni already mirrored the age and spirit of the time. For the rally he was kitted out from head to foot in Sherlock Holmes gear, complete with cape and hat. But it was his own gear … not fancy dress.

So anyway, there I was, sitting in an open-top Bugatti, on the coastal road to Sitges, alongside a man dressed as Sherlock Holmes, who’d once given some flowers to Hitler … and I was wearing an old, smelly, itchy tweed jacket, and it was a hot day, really hot. Then when we finally reached the chequered-flag finishing line in the Passeig de la Ribera of Sitges, I realised I had terrible sunburn from the Mediterranean rays, but it was only on the left side of my face. With his colourful culinary vocabulary, Giovanni said I looked like a half-sliced, well-grilled tomato. We remained close for several years (most of it is in A Load of Bull), but he died in Madrid just six years later, in December 2000. He was 77.

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events Forthcoming Events

I’m going to be chatting about A Load of Bull and The Barcelona Connection with the journalist and presenter Carrie Frais at a brilliant new English bookshop in Barcelona - the Backstory Bookshop (C/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. The event is to celebrate the re-issue of A Load of Bull, and it will start from 5pm. Please RSVP if you you can make it, as the bookshop needs to estimate numbers. Hope to see you there!

On Friday 20 September, I will be doing another event at the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop at the C/ Moratín 7 in Madrid. More details will follow in due course …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I also included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

Eighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has just been re-issued, with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook, and this time worldwide, in both formats. Bookshop distribution is underway but in the meantime you can order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #45

Just a short post this week to say Happy Easter - and that the rain in Spain does not stay mainly in the plain, as per the lyrics from ‘The Rain in Spain’ song in the musical My Fair Lady …

Actually, they used to say that the rain normally stays in Spain’s rocky, steep northwestern corner, in Galicia … but that’s no longer the case. Climate change has clearly altered the direction of the wind, from coming from the north to attacking from the south. Despite the drought we’ve had here in Catalonia, when the rain finally falls it really falls, normally accompanied by a storm (this week it’s been ‘Storm Nelson’). Catalonia’s coastal towns and cities - Barcelona included, as well as here in Sitges - have taken yet another hammering, losing not only most of their sand, but with the boardwalks and promenades suffering further erosion as well.

‘The Catalan coast begins an uncertain season with beaches without sand and promenades destroyed by storms,’ El Diario online newspaper reported this week. Some towns, such as Montgat, are considering giving up the summer season altogether, while others, such as Platja d'Aro, ‘will demolish part of the coastal infrastructure to remake it in accordance with the threats of climate change’. Here in Sitges, as you can see from the photos I’ve taken today, things are bad, too.

Storm Nelson arrived just in time for Easter, a few days after the beach season officially began, but it’s now clear that the ‘chiringuito’ beach bars have been installed too early.

Last November, Catalonia was hit by ‘Storm Ciarán’ (who names these storms?) which brought waves of over three metres, causing devastation to many Catalan beaches that were already in a very precarious state due to previous storms. In Barcelona, the waves caused a part of the Nova Mar Bella promenade to collapse. During the last five years Montgat has gone from having two kilometres of beach to having just 500 metres.

According to geologists in the El Diario report, the change in wind direction has caused many of the elements that were built at the end of the last century to prevent beach erosion (breakwaters, ports or retaining walls) to now be ‘obsolete’. The lack of sand has also left exposed structures such as the train tracks that run along the entire coast of Maresme (Barcelona).

‘Sand regression’ is a recurring phenomenon along the entire Catalan coast, but especially in Barcelona, where the majority of beaches are artificial. I think the sand for the ‘new Barceloneta’ beaches built in time for the ‘92 Olympics came from the Sahara. This causes the city’s beaches ‘to not feed naturally’, according to geologists, so the city depends on its own management system that takes sand from other places where it accumulates. It means the beaches are more or less stable for the summer season, but it doesn’t prevent them from being bare during storms.

Barcelona City Council (like many other coastal councils) are seeking help from Spain’s Ministry of Ecological Transition to carry out further transfers of sand, but it won’t be imminent - and it certainly won’t arrive in time for this summer. The last time it was carried out was in 2010 and at the time, the Spanish Government considered that the cost of €170 million to provide around 600,000 cubic metres of sand since 2004 had been a waste of money.

One cubic metre of sand costs around €6, according to El Diario, and so with 30,000 cubic metres of sand being lost every year, it could be said that the sea has swallowed up more than €1.8 million in the last decade …

As for the boardwalks, a recent report from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) has analysed 31 coastal towns and cities and has assessed that 12 of them have a ‘very high’ risk of being affected due to climate change.

‘Climate change is already an undeniable reality, as are the consequences it will have on infrastructure and constructions that were made without respecting the sea line or taking into account the effects of storms, wind changes or rising waters,’ the report concludes.

Sorry to appear gloomy, but it’s a reality. And then we’ll all be complaining about the 45+ degree temperatures again in a couple of months time …

In the meantime - Happy Easter!

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events Forthcoming Events

I’m going to be chatting about A Load of Bull and The Barcelona Connection with the journalist and presenter Carrie Frais at a brilliant new English bookshop in Barcelona - the Backstory Bookshop (C/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. The event is to celebrate the re-issue of A Load of Bull, and it will start from 5pm until 7pm. Please RSVP if you you can make it, as the bookshop needs to estimate numbers. Hope to see you there!

On Friday 20 September, I will be doing another event at the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop at the C/ Moratín 7 in Madrid. More details will follow in due course …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I also included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

Eighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has just been re-issued, with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook, and this time worldwide, in both formats. Bookshop distribution is underway but in the meantime you can order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #44

It’s that time of the year again - Holy Week - when many locals in Spain (particularly in the south of Spain) have to explain to many tourists (particularly from cruise ships) that the cone-shaped hats, or ‘pointy white hoods’ are a symbol of penance, and have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Ku Klux Klan.

Back in 2019, during the last Easter parades before Covid, the owner of one of the oldest shops in Cádiz (Andalusia), even felt the need to put up a sign which said: ‘No Ku Klux Klan. Spanish tradition.’ It was in anticipation of all the tourists’ dumbfounded (or maybe just dumb) questions.

The pastry shop, the Confitería El Pópulo, doesn’t just sell pastries but also souvenirs, such as ceramic, white-hooded figurines. You can apparently purchase these handmade figurines in the shop throughout the year, but they’re prominently displayed during Holy Week. The owner of the shop, however, had become exasperated explaining to tourists that they didn’t represent white supremacist thugs from the United States. The ‘No Ku Klux Klan. Spanish Tradition’ sign went viral on social media. I’m not sure if the sign is still there, but it’s possible.

It’s not just the tourists who get confused. In 2015, the BBC used an image of a procession of pointy white hoods by the ‘San Gonzalo brotherhood’ in Seville to illustrate an article about the Ku Klux Klan. And according to reports, during their first year in Spain in the 1980s, basketball players Joe Arlauckas and Ricky Brown went out for tapas in Málaga and almost ran away from what they thought was a KKK gathering …

So … what are these ‘pointy white hoods’?

Firstly, they’re called capirotes and are used in Spain by members of a confraternity of penitents, or cofradias. They’re part of the uniform of robes, capes, pointed hats and masks worn by these brotherhoods, including the Nazarenos and Fariseos, during the processions and re-enactments of Holy Week, although similar hoods are common in other Christian countries such as Italy.

Traditionally, capirotes were used during the Spanish Inquisition. Those who’d been singled out by the church and condemned for punishment had to wear a paper cone on their head with different signs on it, depending on what doctrine they’d violated, and as a form of public humiliation.

It was then adopted by Catholic brotherhoods to be worn voluntarily to disguise the identities of flagellants - people who flagellate themselves as penance for their sins. The capirotes were supposedly worn by penitents so that the focus wasn’t on them as they repented, but to God. Francisco Goya painted it as ‘A Procession of Flagellants’ between 1812 and 1819.

After the Inquisition, the tradition carried on, but only the brotherhoods of penitents are permitted to wear them during the Holy Week processions.

Francisco Goya’s A Procession of Flagellants (Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid)

But where did the KKK thugs get their inspiration for their own hoods?

The group’s uniform was apparently introduced in the early 20th century by William J. Simmons, who officially established the KKK in 1915. The hoods ensured anonymity of its members so they couldn’t be held accountable for their actions.

According to research, Simmons possibly adopted the cone-shaped hat to copy the outfit present in D.W. Griffith’s classic film, ‘Birth of a Nation’. Others link the use of the pointy hat to ‘folk traditions of carnival, circus and minstrelsy’.

But forget the KKK nutters …

If you’d like to read a full and fun explanation of Spain’s Easter traditions, as well as some Easter recipes, I highly recommened the ‘Food & Fiesta’ Substack posts by Kimberley Silverthorne.

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen / Unsplash Photo by Mario La Pergola / Unsplash Archive image of sign in the ‘Confitería El Pópulo’, in 2019.

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events Forthcoming Events

I am going to be chatting about The Barcelona Connection and A Load of Bull at a brilliant new English bookshop in Barcelona - the Backstory Bookshop (C/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. They’ve called the event a ‘Book Launch Party’ to celebrate the re-issue of A Load of Bull, and it will start from 5pm until 7pm. Hope to see you there! Here’s a link for more details.

On Friday 20 September, I will be doing another event at the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop at the C/ Moratín 7 in Madrid. More details will follow in due course …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I also included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

Eighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has just been re-issued, with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook, and this time worldwide, in both formats. Bookshop distribution is underway but in the meantime you can order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman's Adventures in Madrid

Eighteen years since it was originally published, I’m delighted to say that ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has just been re-issued, with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook, and this time worldwide, in both formats. Bookshop distribution is underway but in the meantime you can order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Forthcoming Events

I am going to be chatting about The Barcelona Connection and A Load of Bull at the Backstory Bookshop in Barcelona (c/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. The event will start from 5pm. More details will follow soon …

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

For foreign rights enquiries, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.

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Letter from Spain #43

‘Late-night drinking and eating could be SCRAPPED in Spain,’ screamed a Daily Mail headline on Tuesday, and which went on to add, ‘to the dismay of British tourists’. Yes, that really was the headline (accompanied with a few obligatory pics of Brits boozing in Magaluf) - but no, late-night drinking and eating will NEVER be scrapped in Spain.

The whole debate about Spain’s nightlife – and the long working hours required to sustain it – was thrown into the spotlight at the start of the week, after the Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz said that the country’s late-night restaurant culture was out of step with the rest of Europe.

‘A country that has its restaurants open at one o’clock in the morning is not reasonable,’ she said. ‘It is madness to continue extending opening hours until I don’t know what time.’ She also warned that working past 10pm can pose a risk to mental health.

It comes amid a wider initiative by her party, the left-wing alliance of Sumar (and the junior partner in the current coalition government), to introduce new protections for workers in the tourism and hospitality sector, imposing limits on working hours, reduced opening times and earlier closures. Earlier this year she launched negotiations with labour unions and business associations in an attempt to reduce the country’s legal working week from 40 to 37.5 hours, without any loss of pay.

I have a lot of respect for Yolanda Díaz, but I think she’s fighting a lost cause with trying to curtail the hours of Spain’s bars and restaurants - and not only the right-wing opposition were quick to criticise her, but the hospitality sector, too.

The president of the Madrid regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, always a fierce critic of the central government, accused them of wanting people to be ‘bored and at home’ in comments made on social media.

‘Spain has the best nightlife in the world, with streets full of life and freedom. And that also provides employment,’ said Ayuso, whose political career saw a boost after she insisted on keeping bars and restaurants in Madrid open, at least more than in the rest of Spain, during the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘They want us to be puritans, materialists, socialists, without soul, without light and without restaurants because they feel like it,’ she said.

The move was also met with criticism from restaurant proprietors who argue longer opening hours are an essential part of what customers have come to expect - and what venues rely on for survival.

Members of the Spanish hotel industry said that Yolanda Díaz’s views did not reflect their own, with the president of Hostelería de España even boasting that ‘the whole of Europe is modifying its working hours to resemble us’ and that it was ‘a real luxury’ to be able to provide service at one o’clock in the morning ‘to those who leave the office late’.

His views were echoed by the nightlife industry. ‘We reject any proposal which questions Spanish lifestyle, which distinguishes and sets us apart in the tourist market,’ said España de Noche (Spain at Night), an association representing the Spanish nightlife sector.

The number of weekly working hours in Spain is actually in line with the European average, but the day is more spread out and ends later, with Spain being the European country with the most people working after 6pm.

It all goes back to Manuel Fraga, the tourism minister under Franco, who wanted to appeal to potential foreign visitors and investors using the slogan ‘Spain is Different’.

I’d been thinking a lot recently not just about the opening hours of restuarants and bars in Spain, but the timetable of the whole day, because it is one of the themes in ‘A Load of Bull’ - which is just about to be re-issued (see below).

… when Francisco and Mayte suggested they collect me at ten o’clock from the Centro Colón one night, I assumed it was for a nightcap. In fact, I was even offended that we weren’t going for dinner. I took my revenge by having a slap-up room-service meal alone in my apartamento at eight, polished off a bottle of wine, and by ten o’clock I was ready for bed. When they finally turned up at the hotel at ten, saying, ‘We’ve booked a table for half past,’ I didn’t have the courage to tell them what I’d been up to for the past two hours. Instead, I waded my way through another three-course meal. Our feast ended well after midnight – and then we went on for that nightcap in some backstreet music bar. By the time I was back at the apartamento, I’d dined twice and drunk four times as much as I should have.

Spain’s traditional way of life is that people dine late, often at 10pm, and that also means that they have even later leisure hours, and which has a knock-on effect on other sectors, too, notably shops - which end up closing late.

It took me a while to get used to the hours in Spain, but I love them and I wouldn’t want them to change. I used to sometimes get irritated that speciality shops were closed between 2pm and 4.30pm, sometimes even 5pm - but I’d chosen to live here and that was the norm, so … live with it. I remember being amazed that some estate agents would refuse to show me properties during 2-4pm that I was considering renting - ‘because they were having lunch’ - especially when it was the only free time I could view them. But, hey … first world problems, no?

Thanks for reading. I apologise for not posting last week, but there’s been a lot going on. I will not be posting next Sunday 17 March either, as I will be in England - but I will post a short note here again very soon with all details of the new edition of A Load of Bull (see below). My weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ will appear again on Sunday 24 March. Hasta pronto!

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events

The Dalí Museum in St.Petersburg, Florida - home of The Hallucinogenic Toreador - recently sent me photos of The Barcelona Connection prominently on display at the store - and which I’m delighted about.

I always love to hear from readers - and someone sent me a message on Friday to say that she’d bought the book at the museum, had already read it and had ‘enjoyed it immensely’, adding that she now wanted to go back and spend more time with The Hallucinogenic Toreador. Fantastic - thank you!

Re-issue of ‘A Load of Bull’

Big News! A new edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid is being published on 15 March. It has a new introduction, five extra chapters and a new cover design. It will be available in print and as an eBook. I will be sharing further details about this on the day … and then I will probably also start posting photos of Madrid here each week … so watch this space!

Forthcoming Events

A date for your diary: I am going to be chatting about The Barcelona Connection and A Load of Bull at a brilliant new English bookshop in Barcelona - the Backstory Bookshop (C/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. The event will start from 5pm. More details will follow soon …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I also included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

A new edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid is being published on 15 March. It will have a new introduction, five extra chapters and a new cover design. It will be available in print and as an eBook. Further details about this will be posted here very soon. In the meantime, here is a link to the original eBook edition on Amazon.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

For professional enquiries, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #42

The ‘Letter from Spain’ part of this week’s blog post is very short. I have instead posted more below to conclude all my research notes of The Barcelona Connection - and specifically images from Cadaqués that accompany short passages from the final chapters of the book.

The news from Spain this week has been dominated by the horrendous fire in the city of Valencia - or as many media outlets have called it, ‘Spain’s Grenfell Tower tragedy’. The bravery of the firefighters as the blaze ripped through the 14-storey residential high-rise and an adjoining 10-storey block will remain with me forever.

Within 30 minutes the blaze had consumed both buildings of some 140 flats, also due to high winds of more than 50 kilometres per hour, and which also complicated firefighting efforts. Ten people tragically lost their lives (it’s remarkable there weren’t more fatalities), and all residents lost their homes and all their possessions.

Media reports point to the building being covered with ‘highly combustible polyurethane cladding’. Whatever it was, the investigations now begin - and they need to make sure it can never happen again, anywhere.

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The Barcelona Connection - Research

Firstly - a date for your diary: I am going to be chatting about The Barcelona Connection and A Load of Bull at a brilliant new English bookshop in Barcelona - the Backstory Bookshop (C/Mallorca 330) - on Friday 19 April. More details will follow soon …

The notes and photos behind my research for The Barcelona Connection end here, with Chapters 91-94 of the book, set in Cadaqués.

Suffice to say that I absolutely love Cadaqués. I think I could live there (if I could afford to), or at least spend long periods there, just writing, reading, walking, eating and drinking. Together with Sitges and Madrid, it’s probably one of my favourite places in Spain.

I could bore you for hours about the happy times I’ve spent visiting and exploring the area, and I could share hundreds of photos of the town, as well as Port Lligat and Cap de Creus … but I won’t. There’s just a selection below, to illustrate specific passages from the last chapters of the book … and a final ‘send off’ of a few other images.

I’d like to think that you have enjoyed these notes about the research behind the book - and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in it … ;)

As I am soon to re-issue A Load of Bull, I will probably start posting photos of Madrid here each week … so watch this space!

Okay, so this is from Chapter 91 and the Carrer Curós …

Josep Puig’s studio for his Conservacio de l’art business was tucked away within the back streets at the very heart of Cadaqués, in the picturesque Carrer Curós. Vibrant colours of bougainvillea and weaving ivy climbed and drooped from balconies on both sides of the narrow street, intertwining in the middle to form a trellis of shade.

The street itself was cobbled with dark slate tiles, wedged vertically into the ground, while the quaint, whitewashed homes, small shops and galleries dazzled with their sky-blue painted doors and shutters. Some even had rich, colourful landscape scenes painted on the outdoor boxes for electricity meters.

Benjamin noticed that there were cats everywhere: sitting in doorways, on balconies, on windowsills, and there was even a ‘blue cat’ bistro, El gato azul, right next door to Josep’s studio …

And from Chapter 92 in and around the Carrer de Carles Rahola …

The Guardia Civil helicopter ferrying Beltrán from Barcelona to Figueres had been diverted to Cadaqués on CITCO’s instructions. The museum in Figueres had been secured for the imminent G20 visit, and Beltrán’s presence would no longer be required there …

The helicopter landed on the artificial grass of a sports field close to the Cadaqués police station. Since it was a chopper belonging to the Guardia Civil, the Spanish state’s police agency with military-like status, it immediately provoked the wrath of some laid-back Cadaquesencs sitting outside a café nearby …

On a separate note, Benjamin’s thoughts on the journey to Cadaqués also include the Cap de Creus natural park, just a few miles west of the town, via Port de Lligat … where Dalí would conjure up grotestque, monster-like images for a lot of his work from the rocky crags and cliff-edge formations, and even called sections of the stunning coastline his ‘paranoiac cliffs’ …

If you get the chance, I highly recommend the ‘Paratje de Tudela’ walk across parts of the Cap de Creus natural park, where ‘geology and nature come together to kiss the sea’. You’ll find yourself in a prehistoric and hallucinatory landscape, with viewing posts for rock formations that inspired Dalí’s double-image style of painting (all very much part of TBC) - including The Persistence of Memory and a rock that inspired Dalí’s Face of the Great Masturbator, which hangs in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.

We did the walk in August 2020, and here are some random photos from that day:

And finally, here are a few ‘send off’ photos of Cadaqués … that also include some images from a Meli-Dalí photographic exhibition that I saw the last time I visited the town. Some of the images in the exhibition showed Dalí with The Hallucinogenic Toreador in the process of its creation. The work I refer to as The Face in TBC (see Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16) also appears in one of Meli’s photos - and which ‘surreally’ Benjamin refers to in The Barcelona Connection ...

Previous links to my research notes are here:

Chapters 88 and 90 in Letter from Spain #41 (Benjamin back in Figueres, heading to Cadaqués).

Chapters 78-87 in Letter from Spain #40 (Passeig Marítim de la Mar Bella, El Poblenou & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 66 in Letter from Spain #37 (Séverin and Hendrik).

Chapters 59 and 63 in Letter from Spain #36 (Benjamin visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres).

Chapters 50, 52 and 57 in Letter from Spain #35 (Benjamin on the train to Figueres).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #34 (G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #33 (Picasso Museum).

Chapters 39 and 42 in Letter from Spain #31 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 36 in Letter from Spain #29 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 29 in Letter from Spain #28 (Nîmes to Barcelona and tollgates).

Chapters 28 and 32 in Letter from Spain #27 (Pedralbes and Jaume, the Marquès de Guíxols).

Chapter 26 in Letter from Spain #26 (pijos and Beltrán Gómez de Longoria).

Chapter 25 (again) in Letter from Spain #25 (Benjamin’s thoughts on Púbol, Figueres and Port Lligat-Cadaqués).

Chapter 25 in Letter from Spain #23 (Benjamin and Elena on the Passeig Marítim).

Chapters 22 and 24 in Letter from Spain #22 (Plaça Sant Jaume & Nîmes).

Chapter 21 in Letter from Spain #21 (the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - MNAC).

Chapter 18 in Letter from Spain #20 (Nîmes).

Chapter 16 in Letter from Spain #19 (Marta Soler visiting the offices of La Vanguardia).

Chapter 15 in Letter from Spain #18 (Sants, Les Corts and the Plaça de la Concòrdia).

Chapter 14 in Letter from Spain #17 (introducing Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler).

Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).

Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).

Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).

Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).

Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).

Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).

Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).

Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & EventsLinks to reviews & articles

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Michael Eaude was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Dominic Begg was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.

The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

You can also click here for the Kindle edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.

For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #41

One area of Spain that I’ve never visited is Galicia, but I’d like to and I plan to. It is, apparently, one of Spain’s most ‘conservative’ regions, but that’s not why I’d like to go. I’d like to visit the region for its shellfish, crabs and octopus, the Albariño wine, and what must surely be hundreds of stunning coastal walks, let alone the routes of the Camino de Santiago. With the heat that will certainly hit the rest of Spain again this summer (and every summer from now on), I imagine we’ll all be heading to the cooler, north-western region of Galicia in due course, to its lush green hills, rushing streams and Atlantic Sea breeze.

I learnt about the Gallego ‘conservatism’, however, during this past week, with the build up to the regional elections held there yesterday, Sunday 18 February - or ‘18-F’, as they label these things in Spain.

Galicia, I discovered, was the birthplace of the dictator Franco. It was also the birthplace of his right-hand man Manuel Fraga, as well as the former People’s Party (PP) prime minister Mariano Rajoy … not that I’m drawing any direct links to the PP and Franco (you can Google the ‘People’s Alliance’ for all that).

The right-wing PP - okay, many people refer to them as just ‘conservative’ - has governed in Galicia for all but four of the past 35 years - and continuously so for the past 15 years, winning majorities in each of the last four elections under Alberto Núñez Feijóo. He left the region in 2022 to become the national leader of the PP - currently Spain’s main opposition party. I’ve given my views about the PP and their disastrous handling of the Catalan situation in a previous post, and so I won’t repeat it all here. I thought Feijóo’s recent comments about pardoning Carles Puigdemont would really affect the PP in yesterday’s election, however, and I even spoke about this on Talk Radio Europe last week (link below, if you’re interested) … but in the end, it didn’t happen.

Instead, the PP’s hold on Galicia is going to continue for at least another four years following yesterday’s results. They won 47.36% of the vote, giving them an absolute majority of 40 seats in the 75-seat Galician parliament. It’s two seats less than they won in the elections back in 2020, but it’s still a comfortable majority.

The PP’s Alfonso Rueda now becomes the new president of Galicia - while Feijóo has reinforced his position as the PP’s national leader, much to the frustration, I imagine, of the party’s regional leader in Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who’s clearly waiting in the wings for him to simply fail again in whatever.

Polls in recent weeks had suggested that the results in Galicia would be much tighter than they finally were. They’d even suggested that the left-wing Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) and Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE socialists could together possibly secure an absolute majority to oust the PP from power, if Sumar and/or Podemos also won a seat. But again, it didn’t happen.

The BNG did improve its own results, getting 25 seats (6 more than in 2020), with 31.57% of the vote, at the expense of the PSOE, which only won nine (5 less than in 2020). Led by Ana Pontón, the BNG made language a key issue, campaigning on promises to boost the use of the regional Galician language in public education and civil service.

The good news is that the far-right Vox party failed to win a single seat. Which is another good reason to spend time in Galicia …

Missing US citizen

Ana Maria Knezevic, a 40-year-old American originally from Colombia, has gone missing in Madrid. She came to Spain from South Florida in December, reportedly ‘to get away for a while’, due to a long divorce process that she has been going through with her Serbian husband.

Her whereabouts in Spain have been unknown since 2 February.

According to reports, shortly after her disappearance (now over two weeks ago), a man wearing a motorcycle helmet disabled the security cameras at her Madrid rental apartment by spraying paint over the lenses of the building. The next day, two friends received separate text messages from her - one in English, one in Spanish - which said she was running off for a few days with a man she had just met.

Knezevic's friend, Sanna Rameau, has told the media that she was highly suspicious of the English text message sent from her friend's phone.

‘I met someone wonderful!!’ the first message read. ‘He has a summer house about 2h from Madrid. We are going there now and I will spend a few days there. Signal is spotty. I'll call you when I get back.’ 

‘Yesterday after therapy I needed a walk and he approached me on the street! Amazing connection. Like I never had before,’ a second message read. 

‘First of all, that is not how she writes,’ Rameau told the media. ‘Everything is very strange with that message. It’s not something that she would do. It’s not at all like her. It was written in a sense that I didn’t recognise it. Ana is my best friend. I know how she expresses herself, I know how she writes. And it just did not sound like her at all.’ 

Messages in Spanish were also sent to a close friend of Knezevic in Barcelona from her phone. The messages were described as ‘very, very odd’ and that they ‘looked like they’d been [put together] by Google translate’.  Knezevic herself speaks and writes fluent Spanish.

The police in Madrid and the FBI in Fort Lauderdale have launched investigations on each side of the Atlantic.

Spain’s Missing Persons Association (‘SOS Desaparecidos’) has posted Knezevic’s photograph around Madrid - image below.

Here’s a link to my chat with Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe from Wednesday 14 February, if you’re interested:

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The Barcelona Connection - Research

Chapters 88 and 90 of The Barcelona Connection see Benjamin back in Figueres at nighttime, before heading to Cadaqués at dawn. The bus stop in Figueres is near to the photos I posted in Letter from Spain #35 - as ‘he finally located the bus terminal opposite the train station, just off the square where he’d borrowed - okay, stolen - a bicycle earlier’ …

I had fun researching the timetable and route of the ‘orange and red sarfa bus’, how Benjamin might board it, and how and where it would eventually drop him off in Cadaqués - and a few images are posted below. Next week, I will conclude my research notes of the book with all my images of Cadaqués itself, the location of Josep’s studio and the police activity …

Previous links to my research notes are here:

Chapters 78-87 in Letter from Spain #40 (Passeig Marítim de la Mar Bella, El Poblenou & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 66 in Letter from Spain #37 (Séverin and Hendrik).

Chapters 59 and 63 in Letter from Spain #36 (Benjamin visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres).

Chapters 50, 52 and 57 in Letter from Spain #35 (Benjamin on the train to Figueres).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #34 (G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #33 (Picasso Museum).

Chapters 39 and 42 in Letter from Spain #31 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 36 in Letter from Spain #29 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 29 in Letter from Spain #28 (Nîmes to Barcelona and tollgates).

Chapters 28 and 32 in Letter from Spain #27 (Pedralbes and Jaume, the Marquès de Guíxols).

Chapter 26 in Letter from Spain #26 (pijos and Beltrán Gómez de Longoria).

Chapter 25 (again) in Letter from Spain #25 (Benjamin’s thoughts on Púbol, Figueres and Port Lligat-Cadaqués).

Chapter 25 in Letter from Spain #23 (Benjamin and Elena on the Passeig Marítim).

Chapters 22 and 24 in Letter from Spain #22 (Plaça Sant Jaume & Nîmes).

Chapter 21 in Letter from Spain #21 (the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - MNAC).

Chapter 18 in Letter from Spain #20 (Nîmes).

Chapter 16 in Letter from Spain #19 (Marta Soler visiting the offices of La Vanguardia).

Chapter 15 in Letter from Spain #18 (Sants, Les Corts and the Plaça de la Concòrdia).

Chapter 14 in Letter from Spain #17 (introducing Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler).

Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).

Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).

Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).

Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).

Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).

Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).

Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).

Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & EventsLinks to reviews & articles

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Michael Eaude was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Dominic Begg was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.

The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

You can also click here for the Kindle edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.

For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #40

First things first. The Rishi Sunak fasting experiment went well. Very well. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying it was brilliant.

I’m repeating it tomorrow, Monday, and I have even pencilled the word ‘Rishi’ in my diary on every Monday page for the next few months - except 18 March when I’m visiting family and friends in the UK, and it will be impossible to ‘do a Rishi’ then. Also on Easter Monday, 1 April - which is really another Sunday - Rishi has been moved to Tuesday 2 April. Other than that, it’s ‘Rishi Monday’ all the way. As I wrote last week, despite all the bullshit that he and his party come out with, fasting on Mondays is a good policy.

I think I found it easy enough because I’d recently had some practice doing ‘ayunos’, anyway - which is the Spanish word for making sure you have an empty stomach (never popular in Spain). Back in January, I’d had to fast before a stupidly scheduled mid-afternoon blood test, to check my ability to undergo a planned eye op. I then had to fast again before the eye op itself, scheduled at noon.

So on Monday, I simply pretended that I couldn’t eat or drink because I was due to have blood tests late in the afternoon. Then when Monday evening came, I pretended I was due to have an operation on Tuesday morning, so I still couldn’t eat anything. It’s not the most glamorous way to spend a Monday, but it worked for me.

From midnight on Sunday until 8am on Tuesday (32 hours), I only had black tea and coffee, plus sugar free Aquarius, and I even went to a couple of meetings where I only had black coffee with ice. I felt more alert and energetic than I have for a long time.

A couple of tips if you ever try it:

It doesn’t help to receive WhatsApp messages and photos from good friends, deliberately winding me up with photos of how they’re enjoying a full-English breakfast, brunch or lunch - and you should definitely avoid social media ‘foodporn’ posts by people who regularly Instagram their food at cafés and restaurants.

To be totally honest, I felt okay until after sunset, but then I started to get a serious twinge of wanting to eat or drink something. It also doesn’t help if there are others at home preparing and enjoying an evening meal; the sound of cutlery and crockery, or a bottle being uncorked - the smell of food being cooked. You have to hide from it. You have to shut yourself away. Luckily I could do so - I got more work done - and I also didn’t have to wash up!

I emerged later to watch something on Netflix with them, enjoying my sugar free Aquarius from a wine glass. Once you get past 9pm, there’s no turning back. You might be craving a proper drink or a bite of something, but there’s only three hours to go before you can then sleep for the next 7-8 hours before tomorrow’s make-believe open-heart surgery … or being allowed to have breakfast again. If Rishi can do it, you can do it. It’s the self-discipline that he spoke of. At the end, I felt I’d achieved something new. I’d succeeded. I felt better for it, certainly healthier - hence I’ll be repeating it.

As far as the weight is concerned … well, weighing in on Tuesday morning at 8am, after not eating since midnight on Sunday, I was, believe it or not, 2.5kg less than I had been at the same time on Monday morning.

Some of that has returned, of course, but the starting point - the base line? - should/will be less each week, especially combined with other stuff I’m doing. Eating 14.28% less a week has to have an impact, and I’ve read about many other benefits that the body sees from fasting, too.

Anyway, I will continue with the Rishi plan at least until I can get my weight down to what it needs to be (and maybe longer) - but I’ll try not to bore you with it again.

After a weekend of Six Nations Rugby and the Carnival here, I’m actually looking forward to the Monday detox …

Yes, it’s Carnival time all over Spain right now, supposedly celebrating the last ‘day’ before the commencement of Lent, but the ‘day’ here in Sitges officially started on 8 February and the debauchery continues until 14 February. That’s excluding all the presentations in the weeks building up to it, of the Carnival Queen, and the Rei Carnestoltes, and the children’s Carnival Queen, and all the other ‘vermouth’ events they have for whatever excuse, as well as all the ‘Agrupació de Balls Populars’ …

Yesterday, we had the Carnival’s ‘Bed Race’ in town - hysterical - and I spent the day with friends who were dressed up as bottles of vodka, champagne, tequila, traffic cones and policemen. I don’t want to sound like a humbug, but I avoid dressing up for it all, and I still enjoy it …

This evening, in an hour from now, we’re heading off to watch the main parade, known as the ‘Rua de la Disbauxa’ - ‘Debauchery Parade’. Then they repeat it all again on Tuesday night with the ‘Rua de l’Extermini’ - the ‘Extermination Parade’. With around 50 floats, 2,500 participants and 250,000 people expected in the town … the Sitges Carnival is the second most attended event in Catalonia after the Mobile World Congress.

On 14 February, Ash Wednesday, it all ends with ‘The Death of King Carnestoltes’, who is supposedly judged and condemned to be burned the night before. We then have his burial, also known as the ‘Burial of the Sardine’ … and always with Drag Queen mourners in tow. From Thursday onwards, things might start to get back to normal, but I can’t promise it …

Last Thursday, I was delighted to be invited along to Barcelona City Hall to see the Norwegian author Jo Nesbø receive the Pepe Carvalho Lifetime Achievement Award, as part of the BCNegra Festival. A very talented and nice guy. Of all his great work, I was very influenced by Headhunters - both the book and the film - and it remains on the ‘vision’ blueprint document, among other series and films, that the director we have attached for developing The Barcelona Connection is working on. But more on that in due course … ;)

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The Barcelona Connection - Research

My notes on the locations behind The Barcelona Connection will conclude in a couple of weeks, with all the images and research that I carried out for the final chapters in Cadaqués. As I’m currently working on a re-issue of A Load of Bull (planned for this Spring), I might instead start to share a lot of Madrid images that relate to the book - especially as it is being updated with a new introduction and some extra chapters.

In the meantime, most of the action in Chapters 78-87 of The Barcelona Connection takes place around the Passeig Marítim de la Mar Bella, El Poblenou neighbourhood and near to the Port Olímpic. I’m particularly fond of Benjamin squinting ‘into the distance, southwest along the Barcelona coastline, as the sunlight slowly began to drift away’ in Chapter 78 …

The shimmering Mediterranean Sea was now tinged with pink, and the lengthening shadows of giant palm trees deepened into blue and purple along the promenade. The lanterns of beachside bars and restaurants were flickering to life, while the sounds of shrieking kids mingled with guitar music from street performers carried along the seafront …

Here are some random images, courtesy of Barcelona City Council …

Previous links to my research notes are here:

Chapter 66 in Letter from Spain #37 (Séverin and Hendrik)

Chapters 59 and 63 in Letter from Spain #36 (Benjamin visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres).

Chapters 50, 52 and 57 in Letter from Spain #35 (Benjamin on the train to Figueres).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #34 (G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #33 (Picasso Museum).

Chapters 39 and 42 in Letter from Spain #31 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 36 in Letter from Spain #29 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 29 in Letter from Spain #28 (Nîmes to Barcelona and tollgates).

Chapters 28 and 32 in Letter from Spain #27 (Pedralbes and Jaume, the Marquès de Guíxols).

Chapter 26 in Letter from Spain #26 (pijos and Beltrán Gómez de Longoria).

Chapter 25 (again) in Letter from Spain #25 (Benjamin’s thoughts on Púbol, Figueres and Port Lligat-Cadaqués).

Chapter 25 in Letter from Spain #23 (Benjamin and Elena on the Passeig Marítim).

Chapters 22 and 24 in Letter from Spain #22 (Plaça Sant Jaume & Nîmes).

Chapter 21 in Letter from Spain #21 (the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - MNAC).

Chapter 18 in Letter from Spain #20 (Nîmes).

Chapter 16 in Letter from Spain #19 (Marta Soler visiting the offices of La Vanguardia).

Chapter 15 in Letter from Spain #18 (Sants, Les Corts and the Plaça de la Concòrdia).

Chapter 14 in Letter from Spain #17 (introducing Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler).

Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).

Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).

Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).

Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).

Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).

Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).

Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).

Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & EventsLinks to reviews & articles

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Michael Eaude was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Dominic Begg was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.

The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

You can also click here for the Kindle edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.

For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.

Thanks for reading Letter from Spain! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Letter from Spain #39

Wish me luck. In just a few hours from now, I’m starting my very first Rishi Sunak fasting experiment.

As first reported by The Sunday Times last week and since picked up by every other media (at least in the UK), Rishi stops eating from 5pm on a Sunday afternoon until 5am on a Tuesday morning.

Now, I’m not doing it precisely like that. To stop eating from 5pm on a Sunday shows that Rishi has never lived in Spain. It also shows, in my opinion, that his Sundays in the UK must be pretty sad, too.

I’m old enough to remember when shops were shut on a Sunday in the UK, and when pubs had reduced opening hours, and when there were only depressing programmes on TV, like a black-and-white World at War documentary or Songs of Praise. But I was luckily brought up in a family where a late, long, slow, and often boozy Sunday lunch was the highlight of the day, if not the week - the reason Sunday even existed - and it’s a tradition I’ve tried to continue throughout adulthood. As I’m the chef on Sundays (and some other days), I don’t even start working on our Sunday ‘lunch’ in Spain until after sunset …. so you can forget the 5pm curfew over here, Rishi.

You can also forget eating from 5am on a Tuesday morning. That’s a very early start, too early - very ‘10 Downing Street’ - and you’re welcome to it.

According to the reports, Rishi’s fasting lasts 36 hours. My fasting experiment will last 32 hours - of which I’m hoping to be asleep for around 16 of them.

I will stop eating anything from midnight tonight - try to sleep until 8am as there will be no breakfast to get up for, anyway - miss lunch, miss supper - and then start eating again from 8am on Tuesday morning.

Why? - you might ask.

For two reasons.

Firstly, I’m trying to lose weight. Actually, I’ve been trying to lose weight for years, on and off, but this time around I’ve been taking it very seriously. I’ve lost 3.5kg since the day after Boxing Day. I’m tall enough, and so I always like to think (or kid myself) that the weight doesn’t show too much, but I’m now 95kg and should be 83kg - so there’s another 12kg to lose yet. I’ve been aiming to lose 0.5kg a week, which is the ‘healthy’ rate to do it, but it’s stubbornly not dropping below 95kg. Which is where Rishi comes in …

I never thought Rishi would come to my rescue again. The first time he did was with a ‘Bounce Back loan’ at the height of Covid, when he was Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.

During his 36 hours of fasting, Rishi drinks black tea and coffee, as well as water. He actually admitted that he also has an apple and some nuts - which as one Times columnist wrote, is “two cheeses short of a ploughman’s”. I aim to drink water, black tea and coffee, too - as I always do - and also ‘zero azúcar’ (sugar free) Aquarius - but I will go without the apple and nuts.

By not eating for one day out of seven in a week, it should automatically mean I’m eating 14.28% less a week, providing I don’t stuff myself silly for the other six days.

To be honest, I’ve never warmed to any Tory Prime Minister, but the Rishi fasting news came at an opportune moment for me - and which is the second reason I’m doing it: self-discipline.

Last week, you see, I ‘lost my track’ a bit. You might have noticed (or you might not), that I didn’t even get round to writing a blog post last week.

The reasons are various, but it was mainly due to the fact that I had a great deal of ‘admin’ stuff going on, plus a pending eye operation that finally took place on Wednesday (I’m fine, thanks). I didn’t realise beforehand, but the surgeon told me that the eye op means I’m not allowed to do any sport, play tennis, go to the gym, or do any ‘strenuous exercise’ for a month … until March. And if I can’t exercise, it will be even harder to lose the kilos.

I’ve found that in order to lose weight, I need to apply the same methods I do that motivate me to sit down and write - and I mean, write a book. And another book. And another book. It’s self-discipline.

To put it simply - and all revisions and editing aside - if you write one page a day, you have written a 365-page book by the end of the year.

In the same way I keep a diary, or blog every Sunday, I keep track of how many steps I take every day (I use MyFitness App) - and make sure that the average is over 10,000 a day, every week, every month, over the whole year. I’ve also been going to the gym twice a week since November, and I’m obsessed with another app - C25K - spurring me on to run 5k again. But if I can’t keep track … I hate it. If I miss a diary entry, or a blog post, or not writing at least a page a day, or not walking 10,000 steps, or not doing many other things that I have on my list (several lists) … I hate it. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking; it’s probably borderline OCD - but it works for me, if I can track it.

As part of my overall plan to lose weight, among many other things I’d already cut out drinking on Monday, Tuesday (and sometimes Wednesday), and although I’d heard about ‘intermittent fasting’, it sounded too complicated for me. All this 16:8 or 5:2 stuff … what was all that about? And how to do it without messing up your social life?

Then the surgeon told me that I can’t exercise for a month. But along comes little Rishi with his Monday plan …

It’s so simple, I decided - it’s brilliant. It’s possibly the best policy that Rishi has ever come up with as PM.

Nothing happens on a Monday. Nothing ‘social’, I mean - not even in Spain. So it ‘should’ be easy to simply not eat anything, too.

I don’t think I’ll be irritable - but I’ll let you know next week. I need to eat right now and have a good number of nightcaps before midnight …

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The Barcelona Connection - Research

I will return to posting some notes about Chapters 78 onwards from next week …

Previous links to my research notes are here:

Chapter 66 in Letter from Spain #37 (Séverin and Hendrik)

Chapters 59 and 63 in Letter from Spain #36 (Benjamin visiting the Dalí Museum in Figueres).

Chapters 50, 52 and 57 in Letter from Spain #35 (Benjamin on the train to Figueres).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #34 (G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’).

Chapters 48 and 51 in Letter from Spain #33 (Picasso Museum).

Chapters 39 and 42 in Letter from Spain #31 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 36 in Letter from Spain #29 (Hotel Arts & Port Olímpic).

Chapter 29 in Letter from Spain #28 (Nîmes to Barcelona and tollgates).

Chapters 28 and 32 in Letter from Spain #27 (Pedralbes and Jaume, the Marquès de Guíxols).

Chapter 26 in Letter from Spain #26 (pijos and Beltrán Gómez de Longoria).

Chapter 25 (again) in Letter from Spain #25 (Benjamin’s thoughts on Púbol, Figueres and Port Lligat-Cadaqués).

Chapter 25 in Letter from Spain #23 (Benjamin and Elena on the Passeig Marítim).

Chapters 22 and 24 in Letter from Spain #22 (Plaça Sant Jaume & Nîmes).

Chapter 21 in Letter from Spain #21 (the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya - MNAC).

Chapter 18 in Letter from Spain #20 (Nîmes).

Chapter 16 in Letter from Spain #19 (Marta Soler visiting the offices of La Vanguardia).

Chapter 15 in Letter from Spain #18 (Sants, Les Corts and the Plaça de la Concòrdia).

Chapter 14 in Letter from Spain #17 (introducing Inspector Vizcaya and Marta Soler).

Chapter 13 in Letter from Spain #16 (the painting - the possible study of The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí).

Chapters 10 and 12 in Letter from Spain #15 (Isabel Bosch and Lieutenant Trias).

Chapters 8 and 11 in Letter from Spain #14 (Benjamin at Girona Airport and finding the Marqueses’ home in La Bisbal).

Chapter 7 in Letter from Spain#12 (Séverin and Jürgen).

Chapter 5 in Letter from Spain#11 (Elena in Girona).

Chapters 3-4 in Letter from Spain#9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead, plus Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted).

Chapter 2 in Letter from Spain#8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà).

Chapter 1 in Letter from Spain#7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station).

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & EventsLinks to reviews & articles

A review of The Barcelona Connection by Michael Eaude has been published in the October edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

Here’s the link for a review of The Barcelona Connection by Dominic Begg that came out in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

You can also click here for the latest reviews on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads and at Barnes & Noble.

The book is available on Amazon or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from. It can also be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBN number: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

You can also click here for the Kindle edition of A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.

For professional enquiries and foreign rights for The Barcelona Connection, please contact my agent Justyna Rzewuska at the Hanska Literary & Film Agency.