Letter from Spain #75
Women, war, Sánchez & Trump.
I had brunch with two of my sons in Barcelona yesterday. Then we stumbled upon an International Women’s Day rally making its way down Passeig de Gràcia. We stopped and watched.
Standing opposite Gaudí’s iconic Casa Batlló, I took a photo of a lady holding up a banner that said ‘No a la guerra - again’ (‘No to the war - again’). Seeing me take photos, she swivelled her placard around to show me the other side: ‘No guerras’ - ‘No wars’.
No wars at all … not just the Iran war.
It got me thinking. People often say that if women ran the world there wouldn’t be any wars. Would that really be true?
You might immediately reach for a few familiar names - Cleopatra, Queen Isabella I, even the mythical Helen of Troy. Historically, though, very few wars were started by women. That may simply be because for most of history women were rarely given the opportunity to start wars in the first place. For centuries, men were the ones declaring wars, financing them, profiting from them, and then writing the history books afterwards. Even so, I do think there would be fewer wars if women were in charge.
Anyway … ‘No a la guerra’ was the phrase that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also used last week to respond to Donald Trump.
Sánchez was reviving the Spanish left’s historic slogan - ‘No to War’ - that dates back 23 years, to February 2003, a month before Iraq was invaded. Huge demonstrations had swept across Spain, with more than three million people protesting against the military intervention being prepared by George W. Bush and supported by the Spanish government of José María Aznar, leader of the right-wing People’s Party (PP) at the time. In the end, the ‘No to War’ phrase also gave the left an unexpected victory at the polls.
Last week Trump had been slagging off Spain, calling the country a ‘loser’, and threatening to impose a trade embargo after the current Spanish government led by Sánchez refused US military aircraft the use of bases in Andalusia for attacks on Iran.
I touched on this in last week’s blog, when I was simply trying to compare Spain’s RTVE with the BBC, and then Sánchez with Keir Starmer … but I don’t think I explained myself very well.
From a couple of messages I received, I also realise that not everyone is a fan of Sánchez. That’s perfectly fine - each to their own. Like him or not, however, he has the courage of conviction to stand up for what he and his socialist party really believe in - unlike the dithering, U-turning, ‘not Winston Churchill’ Starmer in London, who also received a bollocking from Trump last week. The difference is that Starmer seemed upset by it; Sánchez couldn’t give a toss what Trump thinks about him (which annoys Trump even more).
To clarify something: Sánchez opposes the war in Iran, yes, but that doesn’t mean he has any sympathy for the Iranian regime - one of the most despicable regimes on earth.
No one in the Spanish government, or in Spain more broadly, has any sympathy for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or any other figures in the regime who have been blown to pieces and left in piles of rubble. Thousands of Iranians have also been celebrating.
But as satisfying as it is to see these women-hating, terrorist clerics slowly being eliminated, the Spanish government’s opposition to the war itself is essentially right.
In addition to telling Trump that the position of the Spanish government can be summed up with the words, ‘No a la guerra’, Sánchez also said in a televised address: ‘This is how humanity’s great disasters start … You cannot play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions.’
He called on the United States, Israel and Iran to halt hostilities ‘before it is too late’.
Summarising his government’s stance, he said: ‘No to the bankruptcy of international law. No to accepting that the world can only resolve its problems through conflicts of bombs. And finally, no to repeating the errors of the past.’
In other words: Iraq.
And he spelt it out. ‘The Iraq war led to a more insecure world,’ he said.
I’d go further. All recent interventions in the Middle East have been followed by chaos rather than any orderly transition to democracy.
Just because ‘international law’ is toothless, irrelevant, ‘woke’ (whatever you want to call it) ever since Putin started his war against Ukraine, this Iran war is not even legal under US law, nor based on any interpretation of a UN mandate. It’s also a war of choice, not of necessity.
One thing is precision targeting to blow up the Ayatollah and his sick cronies. Another thing is an American Tomahawk missile hitting an elementary school and killing 175 people, most of them young girls.
There was no imminent threat to the US from Iran’s nuclear or missile programmes. Trump consulted no one but then demanded cooperation - and nor had he exhausted diplomatic negotiations with Iran before resorting to military action.
The biggest danger to the world right now is an unhinged US president making decisions on the fly, egged on by a very persuasive Benjamin Netanyahu, surrounded by sycophants and ignoring any formal process of decision making even within his own country.
Why should Sánchez not be allowed to disagree with the US and Israel? I’m simply pleased that he’s not as gullible as other leaders.
Going back to the lady in my photo holding the ‘no wars’ sign during the rally in Passeig de Gràcia yesterday … what’s that got to do with International Women’s Day, you might ask why?
It’s not just being ‘anti war’. According to the United Nations, women in conflict-affected regions are also disproportionately exposed to gender-based violence. Those rallying throughout Spain yesterday also expressed solidarity with women affected by wars in Ukraine, Iran, Gaza and elsewhere - and with women in Afghanistan.
‘We stand in defence of peace and of all the women of the world,’ Spain’s Second Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz told the press at the rally in Madrid. ‘It is within our power to stop the war, to stop the barbarity, and to win rights. We proclaim ourselves in defence of peace, in defence of the Iranian people, in defence of Iranian women.’
Here’s to women everywhere. And here’s to no more wars.
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’.
I’ll soon 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.
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. Here’s the audio from Weds 4 March …
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.
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.
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.
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
Standing up for a strong set of consistent, fundamental beliefs is the ingredient completely missing from modern politics. At least in the old days, if you thought the conservatives were bonkers, at least you knew what they represented. The legacy of Trump will be a complete willingness to ignore the need for any principles....