Letter from Spain #46

Living in the 'happiest' town in Catalonia, with a festival almost every weekend ...

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.

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