In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Conde 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 full hedonistic reaction to years of facism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a plate of bull's testicles. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalized by tapa induced flatulence, constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love wiht a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

This does for Madrid what A Year In The Merde did for Paris and How Lose Friends And Alieanate People did for New York.