Letter from Spain #47

Has Spain had enough of mass tourism? The double-edged sword of attracting 85.1 million foreign visitors a year.

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.

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