Letter from Spain #73

We don’t need ANY trade envoys.

In 1993, when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was still Prince Andrew, I had dinner in Madrid with his soon-to-be ex-father-in-law, Major Ronald Ferguson.

‘Soon-to-be’, because it was shortly after a Texan millionaire had been photographed sucking Sarah Ferguson’s toes while she sunbathed topless at a villa in St Tropez. This Texan was apparently her ‘financial advisor’. Perhaps the world should have learnt more from it at the time.

Ronald Ferguson had come over to Madrid to referee the annual Spanish Vogue polo tournament that I’d set up while running Ediciones Condé Nast. The night before, I took him to Casa Lucio - one of Madrid’s finest establishments - and treated him to their speciality of huevos estrellados. He was a nice enough guy. A bit grumpy, a bit pompous - okay, very pompous - but what do you expect?

Over dinner, I didn’t mention his daughter’s toes. Nor did I mention a News of the World story about his membership of a London massage parlour staffed by girls who wore ‘starched white medical gowns’ and allegedly offered à la carte sexual services. Perhaps the world should have learnt more from that at the time, too.

Anyway, he had fun refereeing the game at Madrid’s Club de Campo and the Spanish prensa de corazón loved it. But therein lies part of the problem: we needed a polo ‘celeb’ like the galloping major and several others in order to get press coverage for the Vogue Polo Cup, keeping our clients and sponsors happy along the way. No one was interested in the polo itself.

23 years later, in June 2016 in London, I found myself sitting on a table adjacent to a very loud Sarah Ferguson - at a charity dinner at the Masterpiece Art Fair in Chelsea, to be exact. There was a painting that she had collaborated on being auctioned among other items - for the charity Children in Crisis. At least I hope it was for a charity.

Fergie was shouting at guests to ‘bid higher’ - a bit like Geldof’s ‘give us yer f**king money’ (which he actually never said). She caught my eye and started gesturing at me, in a sort of grasping, money-grabbing, ‘get-your-wallet-out’ way. Then I think she quickly realised she was wasting her time with me, beckoning the wrong (and empty) wallet.

Therein lies part of the same problem: the organisers needed a gimme-yer-money royal ‘celeb’ at this charity event in order to get us guests to … hand over our money. Except me, as I have none.

I’ve never met Andrew, thank God.

However, I’ve met enough of these so-called ‘trade envoys’ and their civil-servant flunkies over the years to picture Air Miles Andy as being one of the very worst.

According to the UK Gov site, there are currently 32 Trade Envoys covering 73 markets across 6 continents who ‘engage on substantial trade opportunities identified by government’.

No, they don’t.

Although membership of the trade envoy ‘programme’ is cross party from both the House of Commons and House of Lords - and although it is ‘voluntary and unpaid’ - I believe most of them are just freeloaders.

In addition to these so-called ‘trade envoys’, there are often ‘relations’ ministers, delegates or attachés. Also freeloaders.

We don’t need them. Bang goes any hope I ever had of an MBE …

Over 30 years working in Spain (on and off), I’ve seen my fair share of cronies from the ‘UK Trade and Investment’ (now the Department of International Trade) coming over to Spain on a jolly. To do what, exactly? Promote marmalade? Whisky? Stilton cheese? Paddington effing Bear? Prior to the London 2012 Olympics, we even had a whole delegation come over to Barcelona to ‘learn about the Catalan capital’s success and legacy from the 1992 Olympics’. I think all they did was drink.

I kid you not … we had another one over just last week. The UK’s so-called ‘EU relations Minister’. They wouldn’t need an EU Relations Minister if they hadn’t voted for Brexit. He was visiting Spain, ‘where he raised important issues for the British expat community’. Bollocks, he did.

During his two-day visit, the EU Relations Minister apparently ‘reaffirmed his commitment to work with Spain on issues of mutual interest’, the official email I received from the British Embassy summarising the trip read. Among other things, ‘the Minister visited Madrid’s Mercado de La Paz to highlight opportunities for British food exports to Spain, and sampled some Stilton cheese which he heard is a hit with expats and locals alike’.

Golly gosh, well done. How much did the trip cost?

‘A key focus of discussions included the UK and EU’s work to agree a new food and drink trade deal by 2027. This will make it significantly easier for British expats to purchase UK products and bring produce home when visiting family and friends.’ FFS … who really needs this?

Now imagine Air Miles Andy in such a role … a ‘royal’, a ‘celeb’ and ‘trade envoy’ all in one. What do you get? An arrogant, freeloading scumbag who sleeps with 72 teddy bears and is unable to function without a valet, a chef and a butler, who’d ‘arrive late and only talk to the young women and then leave early’. No one dared criticise him ‘because he was royalty’ and ‘the official line was that, of course, he was doing a wonderful job.’

Not only did he spend 10 years on his worldwide jolly as the UK’s ‘Special Representative for International Trade and Investment’, but it seems he was passing on all details of the trips to his paedophile chum Epstein - who in turn brokered other arrangements and, according to one account, ‘skimmed some cream off the cake’.

The latest insult, according to ‘whistleblowing retired civil servants’ in a BBC report, is that Andrew also charged taxpayers for massages while working as a trade envoy.

One former civil servant has said he ‘regrets that Andrew was allowed to get away with expenses for a massage, when it might have been a chance to check his behaviour’.

‘I can’t say it would have stopped him, but we should have flagged that something was wrong,’ he said.

Something went wrong way before he was putting his massages on expenses … it all goes back to those toe-sucking days.

While writing this, I’ve just seen that Peter Mandelson has also been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. What took them so long?

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For those who are interested …

The Madrid Connection - Research & Images

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!

Past posts on research and images for the book:

• Letter from Spain #71 - Prologue, and the ‘Prado by Night’.

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

In my next post I’ll put some notes and images that relate to Chapter 1 that takes place in the Casa del Campo and then also in the streets surrounding the Italian Embassy in Madrid.

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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

On Friday 17 April at 8pm I am going to be presenting The Madrid Connection in the wonderful Secret Kingdoms Bookshop in Madrid, alongside Ann Bateson. It’s a free event (with refreshments), but as places are limited the bookshop requests you buy a €3 voucher redeemable at the event. Please come along if you are in Madrid at that time - it would be great to see you there! Here’s a link to reserve a place, or click on the image below.

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The Madrid Connection

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