Letter from Spain #42

In praise of Cadaqués ... TBC notes & research

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.

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 & Events

Links 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.