Letter from Spain #11

Three weeks until the general election ... plus TBC news & research

There are now just three weeks until the general election in Spain, which is being held on Sunday 23 July - and Extremadura has now become the third region of Spain to be jointly governed by the right-wing PP and far-right Vox parties, following the 28 May regional and local elections across the country.

The PP and Vox first struck up an agreement to jointly run the Castilla y León region last year, and then Valencia earlier this month.

How can you trust a politician who says one thing and then proceeds to do the opposite?

I’m talking about the PP’s María Guardiola, who will finally be president of the Extremadura regional government. Just 10 days ago she ruled out any agreement with Vox, because it’s ‘a party that denies male violence against women’. In a theatrical statement, she said she could not allow herself to be in a government with them.

A bit of pressure from Madrid, however, and all of a sudden she signed a pact with the far-right, claiming her previous comments ‘were the result of significant anger and a frustration at a specific moment’.

Spain is a pioneer in the fight against violence against women, approving Europe’s first law that specifically cracked down on gender violence in 2004. It made the victim’s gender an aggravating factor in assault cases.

But the far-right Vox — which at the moment is polling at around 14% for 23 July — says gender violence is an ‘ideological concept we don’t recognise’ that stigmatises men, and the party prefers to talk of domestic violence or ‘intra-family violence’.

The programme signed between the two parties in Valencia omitted the phrase ‘gender-based violence’, replacing it with Vox’s preferred ‘intra-family violence’, which it argues ‘guarantees the equality of all victims’.

It’s a taste of what might come across the whole country after 23 July …

The Barcelona Connection - Research

To continue with the research journey that I started to write about here in this blog since 4 June, starting with Chapter 1 in #7 (Benjamin waking up at the service station), Chapter 2 in #8 (the home of the Marqueses de Guíxols, not far from La Bisbal d’Empordà), and Chapters 3-4 in #9 (Marcos Constantinos in Hampstead; Benjamin at the UEA & Stansted), it’s time to introduce Elena in Girona (Chapter 5).

But before I do, I need to go back a bit …

As I have stated in the acknowledgements in the book, The Barcelona Connection ‘has been a long time coming, with a few years first spent writing and developing it as a film, then a TV series (although, who knows, it might still be a film).’ I have written about this before in another blog post (‘Never, ever give up’), about the fact that one of the central ideas of this whole story (I’m not giving the plot away by saying it is the kidnapping of a bullfighter) first came to me when I moved to Madrid in 1988, some 35 years ago.

I then wrote a screenplay in 1997, called ‘Until The Cows Come Home’, which then became ‘Madrid, Madrid’, and then ‘Hello, Dali!’ … and then finally ‘The Barcelona Connection’. I’ll blog more about trying to get this made into a film over the years (and now a TV series) another time … but what has all this got to do with Elena?

Well, during a period of a few years we had a very famous Spanish actress attached to play the role of Elena in a film. In late January 2014, I even had a meeting with her in Madrid, together with the director Roger Gual - nine years ago now - and she was fabulous (there’s no other word). We never announced who it was (and won’t) because we needed to confirm other elements, and unfortunately we failed to do so at the time. I don’t think she would be right to play Elena now in a TV series (and she’d agree with me), but I still hope she might have another role in the project. We’ll see …

Elena is ‘thirty-one and streetwise’ … ‘fiery, olive-skinned, stunning, with sleek, jet-black wavy hair, cut short at the back in a French bob, her eyes literally sparkled, yet she was also often snappy and on edge, and even more so this evening’ …

Elena lives in a cramped apartment on the east side of Girona … a slightly deprived neighbourhood. I have to admit that I’ve never actually been to this neighbourhood (or Elena’s apartment); it comes from my imagination. I don’t know Girona that well - mainly only the centre - and the El Punt-Avui newspaper offices where I used to occasionally be invited to participate in their English Hour TV programmes.

But Elena doesn’t spend much time in her tiny apartment in Girona, either …

Next week I’ll tell you about Chapter 7, Séverin and Jürgen, as Chapter 6 is still Benjamin at the service station …

The Barcelona Connection - Reviews, News & Events

This past week started very well, and continued that way …

On Monday the Dalí Museum in Florida got in touch to say that not only do they want to stock The Barcelona Connection at the museum but will ‘create a notable book display’ for it in their store, as well as plan an event around the book - which is just fantastic. The Salvador Dalí Museum in Figueres will also be stocking the book shortly, but they don’t do events like the Florida museum … at least not yet.

On Thursday 29 June I gave an official presentation of the book in the company of the British Consul in Catalonia, Lloyd Milen. The event took place at the Alibri bookshop on the Carrer de Balmes. Thank you SO much to everyone who came along. It was a very special evening, with some great laughs and wonderful wine from Torres. I feel blessed. I have posted photos on Facebook and Instagram - please connect with me or follow me on those platforms.

Yesterday, Saturday 1 July, I participated in the Vila del Llibre festival in La Rambla with other international writers in Barcelona - photos are also on Facebook and Instagram.

I will be doing an event at The Secret Kingdoms bookstore in Madrid on Thursday 28 September. More details on that in due course.

Links to reviews & articles

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

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

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.