Letter from Spain #76

Many years ago, when my ex-wife and I were bringing up five noisy kids in Suffolk, England, we sometimes spent Sundays visiting friends who also had noisy kids. They would come to us; we would go to them. It was that sort of life.

One couple in particular - let’s call them Arabella and Tristan, because that was exactly the sort of bohemian, gently hippy-dippy Sloanes they were - had three noisy kids of their own.

Tristan, an investment banker in pink trousers (though I always suspected he really wanted to be a novelist or playwright), was enormous fun for about half an hour, but not much longer.

Arabella, by contrast, was usually rather morose and quiet, drifting about in a long burgundy frock from the Boden catalogue and deeply absorbed in her wild garden and herbs. She also had a habit of bringing jars of something fermented to other people’s houses.

Visits to their place inevitably involved being dragged into games in the big garden. Wooden sword fighting. Five-a-side football. Egg hunts. Face-painting. Their faintly theatrical kids were often dressed as if they’d wandered out of some minor Shakespeare play.

Tristan, my sons always complained, was far too competitive at everything - tackling too hard in the football, swinging the wooden swords as if it were Agincourt - leaving the toddlers in tears. Meanwhile Arabella drifted somewhere between the herb beds and the kitchen, still in that burgundy frock.

All the while I was quietly wondering when Tristan might open another bottle of wine. If any at all.

And then, at dawn on Monday, Tristan would bugger off to London for the week. Arabella never seemed curious to go and discover what Tristan might actually be doing there.

Anyway, spending time at Arabella and Tristan’s house was like spending time with Agnes and Will Shakespeare in my local cinema watching Hamnet on Friday night.

I couldn’t wait to go home.

I think it was the daisy chain on the head of the little actor playing Hamnet that did it.

And perhaps the fact that Agnes seemed to spend the entire film in what looked suspiciously like Arabella’s burgundy Boden frock.

And then there was the moment when Agnes finally goes to London to see what Will has been doing.

For anyone that doesn’t yet know, Hamnet is based on the excellent novel by Maggie O’Farrell and tells the story of Agnes and her life with William Shakespeare. Jessie Buckley plays Agnes (or Anne Hathaway), with Paul Mescal as Shakespeare. It also follows the short life of their young son, Hamnet (played by Jacobi Jupe). I’m not spoiling the movie for anyone by saying the story eventually revolves around the death of young Hamnet at the age of 11 from the bubonic plague.

Eventually is the key word.

It’s what eventually happens in the movie - but it had lost me long before that happened.

Look, I get what the movie is about: motherhood, grief … and specifically losing a child, which must be hell on earth. I get all that. I also get the connections it tries to show between Hamnet (son) and Hamlet (the play) - at least the ones that historians have told us.

Grief is the entire point of the whole movie. I get it. I’m not dismissing anyone else’s feelings about it. Some people might have experienced deeply personal connections with the film. I didn’t. Maybe it’s because I knew the grief was coming (but had to wait until nearly halfway through), and then I also felt it was being forced down my throat.

Just because I wasn’t moved by it, it doesn’t mean I don’t have any feelings. I cried during Toy Story. I can weep at anything. I lost my dog Molly in November and that still makes me cry.

People relate to movies in different ways. For me, I watched it as a film that has been nominated as this year’s Best Picture - and I don’t think it deserves to win that award against the other films I have seen (see below).

I simply found it … boring and pretentious. I think the two leads had zero chemistry, and Mescal as Shakespeare was totally unconvincing. The little actor playing Hamnet, a Prince George lookalike - was also too rosy, too Peter Pan, too round-cheeked and annoying for me.

Until the final scene, when Agnes finally goes to the Globe theatre in London to see Hamlet, I was bored out of my mind. Finally we were going to see some real Shakespeare, but it turned out to be a farce. While the long scene tried to show the manifestation of Will’s grief for his deceased son, I had to stifle my laughs looking at the faces of all the extras. The movie’s renowned casting director, Nina Gold, should definitely get an Oscar for finding the weirdest-looking folk she could find.

I like films to take me to another world, but Hamnet simply took me back to Tristan and Arabella’s wild garden - their wild, weird kids, the herbs and fungi and that Boden burgundy frock. I just wanted to go home.

To be, or not to be Best Picture? That is the question. No way, I’d say.

So … of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture, I finally managed to see seven of them. In past blogs, I gave my opinion of Sinners and Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, Sentimental Value and Train Dreams. I have not seen Bugonia, F1 and The Secret Agent.

From the movies that I have seen - I’m sure I’ll be wrong - but here goes:

I believe One Battle After Another should win Best Picture. I also think both Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn in that same movie should win the Best Actor and Supporting Actor awards. I think the director, Paul Thomas Anderson, should also win.

I believe Renate Reinsve should win Best Actress for Sentimental Value.

I loathed the movie Sinners, but I think Wunmi Mosaku will win Best Supporting Actress for her role in it. I think Ryan Coogler will also win Best Original Screenplay for Sinners.

And despite everything I have written above, Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell might get the award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Hamnet. I wish them well.

Oh, and Spain’s Sirat might win Best International Film. I haven’t yet seen it and need to …

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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. I am doing so again this Weds 18 March.

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.

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’ 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 …

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.

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 …

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)

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.

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk