Letter from Spain #71

Sánchez tells Musk where to go.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told Elon Musk to f*ck off last Wednesday. He didn’t actually use that term, but I bet he was thinking it. Whenever I think of Musk, I also think f*ck off.

Elon-effing-Musk had posted one of his ‘Wow’ comments on X, which he owns, while sharing some far-right bullshit that described the Spanish government’s plan to grant legal status to around 500,000 undocumented migrants as ‘electoral engineering’.

‘Spain just legalised 500,000 illegal aliens to “defeat the far-right”,’ a far-right ‘influencer’ called Ian Miles Cheong wrote.

‘It’s not even a secret anymore,’ he went on. ‘By legalising 500,000 illegals under the guise of defeating the far-right, Pedro Sánchez is essentially dropping the mask. This is electoral engineering. The logic is simple: legalise half a million people, fast-track them to citizenship (which takes as little as two years for many), and you’ve effectively imported a massive, loyal voting bloc that’s indebted to the left.’

‘Wow,’ said Elon-effing-Musk … who’s also the founder of aerospace firm SpaceX, all part of his long-term ambition to send humans to Mars …

‘F*ck off,’ thought Sánchez (I’m absolutely certain of it). But then he wrote this response to Musk instead: ‘Mars can wait. Humanity can’t.’

It’s one of the reasons I admire Sánchez (he’s stood up to Trump more than anyone else, too) and one of the many reasons to add to the long list of why I love living in Spain.

I’d rather live in a country that plans to legalise 500,000 people (some of who possibly risked their lives trying to get here), than a country that sends ICE thugs to murder innocent citizens protesting against their own government’s immigration policies.

Here are the facts:

Yes, Sánchez’s left-leaning coalition government is planning a decree to allow up to 500,000 undocumented migrants to regularise their status, marking a clear departure from the tougher migration policies adopted in other parts of Europe.

This regularisation will apply to migrants who have been resident in Spain for at least five months and who submitted applications for international protection before 31 December 2025. If they have no criminal record, they can apply for a renewable one-year residency permit. Based on data regarding the main nationalities of foreign arrivals over the last two years, it appears that the majority of beneficiaries will come from Latin America.

Sánchez has repeatedly argued that immigration has strengthened Spain’s economic growth and increased public revenues. With Spain grappling with an ageing population and a persistently low birth rate, he says migrants play a crucial role in supporting the labour market and safeguarding the pension system. The figures suggest he is right. The country’s economy grew by 2.8% last year, more than double the average growth forecast for the eurozone.

According to Sánchez, migration has driven around 80% of Spain’s economic expansion over the past six years and now contributes roughly 10% of social security income.

‘Spain will continue to defend a migration model that works, one that works for Spain and could also help awaken an ageing Europe,’ the socialist (PSOE) leader said while addressing a meeting of Spanish ambassadors in Madrid last month.

Now … as effing-Musk suggests, is granting legal status to 500,000 ‘illegal aliens’ electoral engineering?

No, it isn’t.

They’ve been trying to say that Sánchez is looking for votes in the next general election that must be held in Spain before 22 August 2027. But guess what? None of these ‘illegal aliens’ will be allowed to vote in that election.

The electoral law states that Spanish citizens of legal age, registered in the electoral census, have the right to vote. To do so, though, one must hold Spanish nationality, a process entirely different from regularisation, which does not confer nationality.

Once people acquire legal residency (regularisation) in Spain – which in itself can sometimes take years bogged down in the application process – it allows them to participate in municipal / town elections, but only if their country has an agreement with Spain.

If migrants are from Latin America, the Philippines or Equatorial Guinea, they would be able to apply for Spanish citizenship after living legally in Spain for two years, which would then allow them to participate in all elections.

However, having residency in Spain is not the only requirement for later obtaining Spanish citizenship, even if someone wants to apply. There are many other requirements. The minimum waiting period is also not two years for all applicants.

Many migrants with residency never apply for Spanish citizenship because, in most cases, it implies renouncing their original citizenship. It’s true: I have never applied for Spanish citizenship because I don’t want to give up my British passport. I can vote in my home town’s elections, but I can’t vote in the Catalan regional elections or in Spain’s general elections.

What about Spain’s social services being overwhelmed? What about the ‘pull effect’?

Obviously the opposition parties in Spain - the right-wing People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox lot - have strongly criticised the government’s plan to grant legal status to half-a-million undocumented migrants … but now let’s look at their main arguments.

Firstly, this isn’t just the socialist-led government of Sánchez doing this. I mean, it’s been done before. Two ‘extraordinary regularisations’ of this kind were previously initiated by the PP itself (in 2000 and 2001) and another four were carried out by the PSOE (in 1986, 1991, 1996 and 2005).

The PP has said that this regularisation could overwhelm social services. Is this true?

No, it’s not true. The people who will be eligible for regularisation have already been living and even working undocumented in Spain for more than five months (as explained above). Therefore, these migrants are already here; they could already be using municipal services and healthcare. They were already consuming products and paying taxes on them, but their lack of documentation prevents them from contributing to social security.

To put it simply, they’ve probably been paid in cash (if paid at all) for whatever they’ve been doing here. The measure could bring around 500,000 people into the system, which will have a direct impact on the economy.

Vox - of course - warn that the mass regularisation will act as a magnet for further illegal immigration. Will it?

No, I don’t think it will. People arriving from now on don’t meet the requirements and would not be able to automatically regularise their status. Reports also illustrate that there’s no evidence that these measures created a ‘pull factor’ after previous regularisation processes.

The facts and figures show that Spain is still maintaining controls against irregular entry (despite the far-right saying otherwise) while also promoting regulated, legal immigration.

It’s true that irregular/illegal arrivals in the Balearic Islands rose in 2025, where most crossings originate from Algeria. But overall in 2025 illegal migration to Spain dropped sharply, with arrivals falling by more than 40%, driven mainly by a steep decline in crossings from West Africa to the Canary Islands (which fell by 62%). And that’s because Spain also signed cooperation agreements with several African countries that are major sources of illegal migration, aimed at dismantling people-smuggling networks.

Sánchez himself has repeatedly argued that reducing illegal migration requires tackling the issue before migrants set off.

He’s right … but does this stop the likes of Elon-effing-Musk and co spreading their bullshit?

Wow, no.

‘The tyrant Sánchez hates the Spanish people,’ Vox leader Santiago Abascal ranted on Musk’s X. ‘He wants to replace them. That’s why he intends to create a pull factor by decree, to accelerate the invasion. He must be stopped. Repatriations, deportations, and remigration.’

Update on the Oscars watchlist …

Further to my post last week about trying to watch as many of the films nominated in the Best Picture category before the Oscars, we went to see Marty Supreme on Friday.

What can I say? It was noisy. It was a wild, screwball nightmare, to be honest. Many moments were simply absurd.

Timothée Chalamet is a great actor - clearly. But I didn’t warm to his character Marty Mauser at all. In fact I hated him, so I didn’t care what happened to him. The bathtub and dog scene was terrific - but then the plot continuing with the dog was just too much. I felt exhausted by the end of the movie, and I was pleased once it was over.

So … does it deserve the Best Picture award? Not for me. Best Actor? Chalamet will probably get it, but I preferred DiCaprio in One Battle After Another.

From what I have seen so far, this is my Best Picture list order:

1. One Battle After Another

2. Marty Supreme

3. Sentimental Value

4. Train Dreams

Still to watch: Sinners and Frankenstein this week - then somehow Bugonia, F1, Hamnet and The Secret Agent to watch before 16 March.

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For those who are interested …

The Madrid Connection - Research & Images (2)

After The Barcelona Connection was published in April 2023, I started to post images and notes in this Substack blog about my research for the novel, especially about Salvador Dalí and many of the locations that appear in the book - from Nîmes to Barcelona, with Figueres, Cadaqués, Púbol, La Bisbal and even Girona airport in between. Links to all those posts can be found below.

I am now doing the same with The Madrid Connection - just for those who might be interested!

In last week’s post, I mentioned about my time spent in the Prado Museum in Madrid (where the story in the book starts), somewhat amazed that I hadn’t been arrested while casing the joint.

The Prologue of The Madrid Connection starts with a ‘Prado by Night’ event. These are normally public events and free. I think during 2025 the museum opened its doors for free on the first Saturday of most months, from 8.30pm to 11.30pm. In my novel, however, it is a private event for patrons, sponsors, suppliers and ‘friends of the museum’.

As I wrote last week, I lost count of how many times I visited the museum - and specifically Rooms 2 through to 7A - making notes on the ‘floor plans’ that I collected. These visits were not ‘Prado by Night’ events; they were simply the ‘free access’ periods that the museum offers: from 6-8pm, Mon-Sat, and from 5-7pm on Sundays. I used to turn up just before 6pm and join the back of a long queue outside, thinking that I’d never get in - but the queue always moved quite quickly from 6pm onwards.

Anyway, in the book’s Prologue I have two characters following the same path I often followed through the museum, leading to Rooms 7 and 7A on the first floor, where a Caravaggio painting hangs on the far wall. This painting is not named in the Prologue, but because it’s on the front cover of the book, I might as well do so here.

It is David and Goliath - yet the Prado call it two different names: in English, David with the Head of Goliath - and Spanish, David vencedor de Goliat (David triumphant over Goliath). It is the only painting by Caravaggio in the Prado. It is also one of three versions of David and Goliath that Caravaggio painted; the other two are in Vienna and Rome.

Here’s an anecdote. The first time I went to the Prado in search of this painting - already knowing that I wanted to use it in my book, I reached the gallery where it was supposed to be and instead found an empty space on the wall. It was missing. Stolen? No, the guard told me it was undergoing restoration work. But for me, that was a good sign - a message!

The painting is now in Room 7A, but it wasn’t always there. It used to be in Room 6, and it was moved to another room when the museum held a temporary exhibition of Ecce Homo, ‘the lost Caravaggio’ that also gets a mention in the book.

In the adjacent Rooms 2 - 6, there are five sets of double French window doors, four of which overlook a courtyard just one floor below - the ground floor - where there’s an outdoor Café Prado alongside the main entrance to the museum (more on this Café Prado in future posts). Every time I went to Rooms 2 - 6, the wooden shutters on the French windows were open, and there was only one steel bar that could be fixed to the base of each set of doors, yet leaving the glass windows without any bars across them.

I once asked a female guard if they closed the wooden shutters at night. She looked at me suspiciously, but then smiled and told me that she didn’t know for certain as she wasn’t the ‘last to leave’ the gallery - but she didn’t think that they did.

I became quite obsessed with these French window doors with their ‘Juliet balconies’ while researching the book. Their proximity not only to the priceless paintings that hung just inside (including the Caravaggio), but the almost touching distance to anyone at the Café Prado outside …

Here you have some text from the Prologue and just a few of the many images I took during my research …

Next week I’ll post some notes and images of the Chapter 1 research and my experience of the Casa del Campo, plus the Italian Embassy in Madrid.

PS … you can purchase The Madrid Connection here (and The Barcelona Connection here) … or you can simply order them from your local bookshop … ;)

At night, the Prado Museum in Madrid belongs to the paintings. Once the public has gone, the museum sinks into a heavier stillness; the galleries feel older, and they seem to watch each other in a private, unbroken vigil.

On this night, however, that hush was fractured by the soft chatter of a reception in the Goya rotunda – a sound that thinned as a young man stepped away from the main crowd, a silent authority pacing one step behind to keep him on the path already chosen for him.

This season’s first invitation-only ‘Prado by Night’ event was a modest affair – a scattering of patrons, sponsors, suppliers and Amigos del Museo mingling in one of the main galleries – but it was enough. It was meant to strengthen relationships, mark another year of working together. For most guests, it was about the wine and the canapés – with the occasional selfie, angled carefully to avoid the paintings, as museum rules required. For them, it meant the opposite – slipping clear of the small talk, away from the glassy smiles. It meant space to walk, to look, to move without questions.

They eased away from the laughter and the clink of glasses, drifting into the quieter wings, through the half-empty galleries that had been opened for the night. Italian Renaissance portraits glowed under the warm lights, Flemish paintings hung in sombre rows, the Spanish masters held court with their saints and kings.

By the time they came to the rooms displaying Italian Baroque, the air felt cooler, as if the museum had closed itself around them. They turned a corner into another gallery. The figure behind him slowed, giving the faintest nod towards the wall ahead …

… He didn’t answer. But in his head, he was already mapping it out – one floor up, the painting so close to the tall French doors, their pale, canvas-like screens filtering the streetlights and the night beyond into a ghostly blur. No shutters. No grill. Glass not too thick.

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A bit about me: on and off, I have worked in the media in Spain for some 30 years (click here for more info). Currently, in addition to writing my books set in Spain and developing them for the screen (see below), I also chat briefly on most Wednesday mornings to Giles Brown on Talk Radio Europe about the latest news from Spain.

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Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events

Thanks to everyone who made it along to the Come In Bookshop event in Barcelona last Tuesday!

Here’s another date for the diary: on FRIDAY 17 APRIL I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid. More details to follow in due course.

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The Madrid Connection

Past posts on research and images for the book:

• Letter from Spain #70 - time spent in the Prado Museum ‘casing the joint’.

Published on 26 Nov 2025, The Madrid Connection is a standalone crime-thriller, but also a sequel to The Barcelona Connection (see below).

Here’s the back cover blurb from The Madrid Connection:

Of all the paintings in all the galleries in all of Madrid.

They chose a Caravaggio.

And they chose last night.

On the night Madrid hosts the Champions League Final, disaster erupts at the Prado Museum: a guard is murdered and a Caravaggio is stolen.

British art detective Benjamin Blake, hoping for a quiet few days in the city on a low-key assignment, instead finds himself dragged into the chaos he swore to avoid.

Suddenly he’s the investigation’s uninvited headache – and possibly its key.

Rival mafias begin circling. The Asians want him gone. The Italians want him alive – at least for now.

As the cultural bureaucrats drag him into the case to deflect from their own failings, Madrid’s homicide chief – choking on his own lies – wants him nowhere near the case, let alone the truth.

Across the city, journalist Elena Carmona is in Madrid on a separate assignment, digging into the poison of racism in football – an evil that opens into a far wider conspiracy.

Trafficking, exploitation and revenge run beneath the pitch and deep into the criminal underworld, drawing her straight towards the same mafias now circling the stolen Caravaggio.

As her investigation crashes straight into Benjamin’s, they find themselves at the centre of something far darker than either imagined.

Art, money, football, murder, mafia – Madrid was never going to keep them apart.

The Madrid Connection is a fast, gripping and darkly funny page-turner - the perfect sequel to The Barcelona Connection.

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The Barcelona Connection - Research & development for the screen

‘The Barcelona Connection’ is in development for the screen, and I hope I will be able to post further news about this here in due course.

Research: In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I 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 ISBNnumber: 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.

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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 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 worldwide, in both formats. You can also 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.

As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …

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