invisible woman
CHAPTER 3
On Saturday morning, 14 December 2024, I decided to become a Spanish doll.
It was a perfectly reasonable decision, considering that I was in an official relationship with a Spanish naval commander and I was formally invited, as his partner, to a Christmas lunch organised by the Spanish community at NATO's Allied Maritime Command. He has paid the dinner ticket for both of us, and the money has been accepted. In my lawyer’s world, it was a contract.
Two days earlier, as I said in the previous chapter, I had attended the NATO Christmas party at Northwood Headquarters. I had entered the military establishment through the ordinary visitor procedure, met some of Laureano's colleagues, spoken to his superior, Admiral Delgado, and returned home feeling rather pleased with myself. Friday passed quietly, without any reason to reconsider that impression. I was discovering my partner's world, meeting his people and doing precisely what I had wanted when, a few weeks earlier, we agreed that we should begin building a social life together.
For Saturday, I decided to make a greater effort.
I chose a black dress embroidered with red flowers, earrings inspired by Salvador Dalí's melting clocks and a hairstyle that, to my mind, looked suitably Spanish. I added a little fur muff, partly because it completed the outfit and partly because England in December is not the most hospitable environment for decorative femininity.
Laureano looked at me and smiled.
“Eres mi muñeca española.”
You are my Spanish doll.
I liked it. I was 48, a lawyer, a mother and a woman who had spent most of her adult life making decisions without consulting anybody's permission. I could afford the luxury of becoming somebody's doll for an afternoon. Particularly when the somebody in question was a handsome young man in his mid fifties with whom I was very much in love.
There was affection in the expression. There was playfulness. I had dressed for him, he had noticed, and we were going to spend the afternoon together.
I had no reason to look for any deeper meaning.
We collected his two children from the house where they lived with their mother and drove to Bushey. I was happy that they were coming with us. My daughter was not invited, as she did not yet belong to that social circle. I did not push for it, however I considered it, as I thought it would be a good experience for my daughter to blend into the Spanish culture, as she was the top student at the top Catholic college with Spanish being her strongest subject. But on that occasion we have decided to skip it. It appeared it was a wise decision, but I will tell the reader about it later.
As stated, our children had already met, and our relationship was moving beyond the private excitement of two adults who had fallen in love rather unexpectedly. We were beginning to arrange a shared family life, and I regarded that as a natural and welcome development.
The lunch was held in a marquee at a pub.
The marquee was unheated.
I mention this because, when reconstructing an event many months later, it is easy to become distracted by the alleged significance of conversations, social hierarchies and other people's possible intentions. At the time, however, my most immediate concern was the temperature. I was wearing a beautiful dress, not thermal underwear, and the organisers appeared to have confused the English winter with the Canary Islands.
The place was still relatively empty when we arrived. The tables had not yet been properly prepared. People stood in groups, talking to one another, while children moved around and the familiar noise of a community gathering gradually filled the space.
Laureano had colleagues to greet and conversations to attend to. I was left to entertain myself, which ordinarily presented no difficulty. I speak several languages, enjoy meeting people and have spent decades in situations requiring me to establish a working relationship with strangers. A Christmas lunch seemed a considerably less demanding assignment than most of my professional encounters.
So I approached a group of women.
They flocked away.
I approached another group. The conversation dissolved, and its participants found reasons to go elsewhere.
I tried again, with approximately the same result.
After several attempts, I began to feel like a border collie trying to herd sheep. Every time I approached the flock, the sheep scattered in different directions.
I found it rather funny at first. Perhaps my timing was unfortunate. Perhaps the women were busy. Perhaps there was some social convention I had failed to understand. I had not yet learned enough Spanish to follow their conversations properly, but I could smile, introduce myself and attempt the ordinary courtesies of civilised life. I had even learned to say ¡Encantada! (My sixth Spanish word (and second amongst the civil ones).
None of this seemed to work.
Eventually, I decided that the sheep could look after themselves.
I wanted a drink. A warm one.
I went outside the marquee, partly to look for Laureano and partly because I had become bored with the unsuccessful exercise of introducing myself to women who appeared determined not to be introduced.
There was a group of Spanish officers standing nearby, including Admiral Delgado, the only man I knew apart from Laureano.
In my cultural universe, approaching a group of men at a social gathering is a fairly straightforward operation. One says hello, joins the conversation and, sooner or later, somebody asks whether one would like a drink. This is not a matter of international law, although I suspect it has been observed more consistently than some international treaties.
I walked over and began talking.
I cannot remember the exact conversation. It was the ordinary social exchange one has while waiting for lunch: the weather, the occasion, a few pleasantries. I remember the officers seeming rather uncomfortable, although I had no idea why. Eventually, as I recall, Delgado asked whether I wanted something to drink.
At that moment, Laureano appeared out of thin air and said that he would get it for me.
And so he did.
I finally obtained a cup of mulled wine, said bye-bye to the officers and we went inside the marquee.
That was the extent of my adventure among the Spanish officers.
I would not normally devote so much attention to a conversation about nothing in particular, except that, much later, I encountered press accounts suggesting that I had asked officers inappropriate questions during the aperitifs.
The detail interested me.
The NATO Christmas party on Thursday had been a crowded gathering with national food stalls. There had been no comparable pre-lunch aperitif. My only substantial conversation with anybody other than Laureano had been with Delgado, and we had discussed Catholic Christmas traditions and food.
The Spanish lunch on Saturday, however, did have an aperitif. And I had indeed approached a group of officers.
Were the two events being confused?
Was the allegation supposed to refer to Saturday rather than Thursday?
And, if so, what exactly had I asked that was inappropriate?
I cannot establish from a newspaper account which conversation somebody had in mind, or whether the description was accurate. But I remember my encounter outside the marquee. I wanted a drink, I exchanged some pleasantries, and Laureano bought me mulled wine.
I have tried to identify the intelligence value of this operation.
So far, without success.
Even if Putin himself offered me a million roubles to identify the officers I approached that afternoon, I regret to say I would have to decline the offer.
I cannot remember their names.
I cannot remember their ranks.
Apparently, I was a spectacularly incompetent Russian spy.
We then waited for lunch. It seemed to take forever. Perhaps two hours passed before the organisers began arranging the dining area, bringing out folding tables, covering them with paper and placing folding chairs around them.
By then I was thoroughly cold. My feet were freezing, my bottom was freezing, and the elegant Spanish doll was beginning to regret not dressing as a Norwegian fisherman.
When everybody started taking their places, I discovered that there was no chair for me.
I looked at Laureano and made a joke, loudly enough for the people around us to hear (maybe it was not a joke, but a statement).
“Well, darling, I suppose I'll have to sit on your lap. At least I'll be warmer. My legs and my bottom are completely frozen.”
I thought it was a good solution. It was certainly cheaper than getting another chair.
The reaction was peculiar. People looked embarrassed, almost scandalised. I had no idea why a perfectly ordinary joke between two adults in love should produce such discomfort.
At that moment, Delgado walked past.
“Enrique,” I said in English, quite calmly, “am I going to get a chair?”
He assured me that I would and instructed somebody to bring one.
A chair appeared.
I did not think there was anything extraordinary about this exchange. I had grown up in a military family, where the commanding officer was responsible for the people under his command. If something went wrong and nobody else appeared to be dealing with it, one could ask the senior officer. Laureano was not responsible for organising the lunch or arranging the seating, and I had no idea who was. Delgado was the most senior officer present I knew. So I asked him.
I had been comfortable around senior military officers since childhood. I had sat on their knees, listened to their conversations and grown up in an environment where rank commanded respect but did not turn a man into a deity. A general or an admiral might command thousands of people, but he remained a human being in a social gathering, especially with kids and women.
And human beings could be asked perfectly ordinary questions.
Only much later, when I read Spanish press accounts describing my behaviour at that lunch as scandalous, did I begin to wonder whether this was the scandal they had in mind.
Perhaps addressing an admiral directly, by his first name, was regarded as an extraordinary breach of Spanish military etiquette. Perhaps a dehumanised woman in my inferior position was expected to wait quietly until somebody noticed that she had nowhere to sit. Perhaps the combination of the two was simply too much.
I do not know.
But I can see how the same exchange might have appeared very different to people operating within different assumptions about hierarchy and social standing.
In the military world of my childhood, a senior officer's authority carried responsibility. In the world I encountered that afternoon, I began to wonder whether authority was understood rather differently — as a distance that certain people were not supposed to cross.
And perhaps that was my scandal.
A woman whom some people apparently did not consider worthy of a place at the table had addressed the highest-ranking man present as an ordinary human being and asked him for a chair.
Not permission to enter a classified facility. Not access to military secrets.
A folding chair.
Anyway, I sat down, grateful at least to have somewhere to put my frozen bottom (and half-disappointed that I was not able to warm it up on Laureano’s lap).
The food was dreadful, but I was starving enough to enjoy it. I cannot say the same about the company.
I found myself seated between Simone, a Brazilian woman, and Pilar, the wife of a Spanish petty officer.
Simone was perfectly pleasant. Her partner, as I understood it, was also going through a divorce, and we had an entirely brief but normal conversation about immigration and other matters. We spoke in English. Her partner was quite friendly too. There was nothing remarkable about either interaction.
Pilar was different. She spent much of the meal with her back towards me, occasionally addressing me in Spanish when she wanted something passed across the table. I found this particularly curious because Pilar was an English teacher. Evidently, professional competence in a language does not necessarily imply a desire to use it socially.
Still, I did not consider this a major problem. I had no intention of forcing anybody to become my friend. If somebody preferred to communicate with me only when she needed the salt and call it la sal, that was her choice. My legitimate Spanish vocabulary was expanding at a significant rate of one word an hour.
Pilar's husband, Alex, was much more conversational.
At some point, I mentioned that I came from a family with naval traditions. My grandfather had been a naval officer and a pilot, and I had grown up with a particular familiarity with military social life. It seemed a natural subject to raise among naval people, although Alex was not especially interested in my family history.
He wanted to talk about Poland.
He was considering applying for a posting in Bydgoszcz, and this immediately gave us something to discuss.
I know Poland well. I spoke Polish. I had spent part of my youth there and regarded it as one of the countries that had shaped my identity. I was delighted to explain something about the place where he hoped to serve.
I also attempted to teach him how to pronounce Bydgoszcz.
This was probably the most entertaining moment of the entire lunch.
Polish has a magnificent ability to assemble consonants in combinations that appear designed to defeat the vocal apparatus of foreigners. Spanish is a beautiful language, but it does not adequately prepare its speakers for szcz.
Try teaching a Spaniard to pronounce Bydgoszcz and you will understand why I enjoyed myself.
That was our conversation. Poland, a possible military posting, my family's naval background and the pronunciation of a Polish city.
So there we sat at the table, me having some conversation with Alex, Simone and her partner, and Laureano keeping my frozen feet between his knees and massaging them from time to time to re-establish the circulation.
However, I could see that something was strange, but I could not identify a coherent reason for it.
Nor did I particularly want to spend my Christmas lunch conducting a psychological investigation into the Spanish naval community. I was a guest. I had come to enjoy myself. If some people did not want to speak to me, there were others who did.
I did not know that the question of where I should sit had already generated an unexpectedly elaborate documentary history.
I learned about it only on 16 June 2025, when Laureano forwarded me three emails from the previous December.
The first was dated 11 December 2024, at 12:56. It contained the original seating arrangements for the Spanish Christmas lunch.
According to Laureano's later account, due to his rank, we were initially supposed to sit at the senior table with Admiral Delgado.
The second email was sent the following morning, 12 December, at 08:22. It announced version 2.0 of the seating plan and explained that changes had been made only to tables six, seven and eight. It meant we were moved.
Then, at 17:17 that afternoon, came version 3.0. We were moved again.
By the time of the lunch, Laureano and I were seated with Simone, Pilar, Alex and the others, rather than at the senior table where, according to his account, we had originally been placed.
Military organisations have hierarchies, and their social arrangements often reflect those hierarchies. A table is not merely a piece of furniture when the guests are officers accustomed to recognising rank, seniority and position. Where one sits can communicate something about where one belongs.
I had no reason to think about any of this on 14 December. I had not seen the correspondence, and I was not familiar enough with that particular community to interpret its seating arrangements. As far as I was concerned, I had been invited to lunch with my partner and his children.
The significance of the three versions became more interesting when I learned about another event, which happened on 12 December 2025.
In a complaint subsequently prepared in Laureano's name, it was recorded that Captain David Fernández-Portal, Admiral Delgado’s aid, had summoned him that day and advised him not to attend the NATO Christmas party that day with me because it was too soon.
Laureano had refused.
According to the complaint, he was warned that he would face consequences.
I remember thinking about the timing.
On 11 December, we had apparently been allocated places at the senior table.
On the morning of 12 December, a revised seating plan was circulated.
That same day, according to Laureano's account, he was advised not to bring me to the NATO Christmas event and warned of consequences when he refused.
At 17:17, a third seating plan was circulated.
At 17.17 I was travelling to Northwood in a taxi, entirely unaware that the Spanish community had been rearranging its Christmas tables. I was excited about the party, looking forward to seeing Laureano and anticipating a pleasant evening.
I had no idea that the position of my chair at Saturday's lunch might have become a matter of social significance and linked to my attendance at the MARCOM event at Northwood.
The organiser, Major Christian Revidiego, evidently possessed a sense of humour. In the correspondence, complaints about the seating arrangements were directed towards imaginary Christmas authorities. By version 3.0, dissatisfied guests were invited to address their grievances to Santa Claus's complaints department.
I found this delightful.
Looking back, I wonder whether Santa Claus's Complaints Department was the one institution I had overlooked. I subsequently submitted complaints to NATO and the British and Spanish Ministries of Defence, both individually and jointly with Laureano, without obtaining the recognition of our grievances that we had sought.
Perhaps I had simply been writing to the wrong authorities all along.
Perhaps Santa Claus would have been more responsive.
Anyway, where we go - three versions of a seating plan, two days of administrative activity, and a fictional complaints mechanism presided over by Santa Claus.
What the documents do not establish, by themselves, is why each change was made or whether the warning and the seating arrangements were connected.
Nevertheless, the question is difficult to resist.
When Laureano was told that he would face consequences, what exactly was meant?
Did it mean that a Spanish commander who insisted on bringing his new partner to a Christmas party would lose his place at the admiral's table?
Was the intended punishment merely to seat him among sailors and petty officers, leaving his Spanish doll / Red Sparrow to negotiate the acquisition of a folding chair?
Or did the word consequences already refer to something more serious?
Six months later, Laureano would find himself facing restrictions affecting his access to his workplace and suspension of his security status. My own access to Northwood would become the subject of official decisions, correspondence, complaints and litigation.
It is tempting, knowing what happened later, to imagine that somebody had already designed the entire sequence in December.
But I cannot say that.
I do not know whether the people involved in the December 2024 events anticipated what would happen in June 2025. I do not know whether the seating changes were intended as punishment or humiliation. I do not even know whether the missing chair was connected to the seating revisions or was simply the product of poor organisation.
The lawyer in me insists on these distinctions.
The woman who spent that afternoon freezing in a marquee in Bushey is nevertheless entitled to wonder.
There was also another Christmas joke whose significance would become apparent much later.
Gorrión Rojo.
Red Sparrow.
By the autumn of 2026, Spanish press accounts would describe that nickname as something used about me within the MARCOM environment. It was a strange development for a woman who had spent the relevant December evenings discussing Catholic food traditions, looking for mulled wine and teaching a Spanish petty officer to pronounce the name of a Polish city.
I wondered what the joke was supposed to mean.
The Santa Claus joke was easy enough to understand. Somebody had made a light-hearted comment about the inconvenience of changing tables.
The Red Sparrow nickname was rather different. It invoked a fictional Russian intelligence operative, with all the sexual and political associations attached to that image.
Perhaps some people regarded it as harmless humour. Perhaps others took it more seriously. The available accounts do not allow me to reconstruct who first used the expression, what they intended or how it travelled.
But the contrast stayed with me.
One joke concerned the administrative problem of placing people at tables. The other concerned the identity of a woman who had never been asked whether she recognised herself in the description.
I had arrived as Laureano's Spanish doll. I accepted it on that day.
Somewhere beyond my hearing, according to later accounts, another character had begun to take shape.
A Red Sparrow. I never accepted it. I never will.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether that was the real cultural misunderstanding. I had imagined that being introduced into a community meant becoming a participant in it. I expected conversations, introductions, ordinary curiosity and perhaps the beginning of friendships.
Instead, I encountered people who appeared to imagine something about me that I did not imagine about myself.
I cannot establish what each person believed or why particular women avoided me. I can only describe their behaviour as I experienced it. Nor was the hostility universal. Simone spoke to me normally, as did her partner and Alex. That difference is important. It prevents me from reducing an entire community to a single collective intention.
Yet the atmosphere was unmistakably uncomfortable.
It was as though I had arrived at a social event after some conversation had already taken place, and everybody else knew its subject.
Except me.
By the time we returned home that Saturday, I was thoroughly frozen. My elegant outfit had survived, although my enthusiasm for Spanish outdoor hospitality had suffered a little. The lunch had been disappointing, the food dreadful, and I had failed rather spectacularly to make friends with most of the Spanish women.
Still, I was happy.
I had spent two days meeting people from Laureano's professional world. I had attended a NATO Christmas party, accompanied him to a Spanish family gathering and spent time with his children. These were the ordinary milestones of a relationship becoming serious. I remembered stories of my grandma about her making up with my grandad’s friends and colleagues. She managed so I would.
I had no reason to believe that the awkwardness of one lunch should alter our plans.
I did notice that his children were unusually quiet afterwards.
They seemed sad, subdued, almost withdrawn. I could not understand why. I had spent much of the afternoon trying to make conversation with adults, and I had not followed everything happening among the children.
Months later, Laureano would tell me that he believed his children had also been treated unfairly at the lunch. He would subsequently describe their experience as discriminatory.
But I did not know that on 14 December.
I noticed their sadness without understanding its possible cause.
My attention was already turning towards something much more exciting.
In a week's time, we were going to Kraków.
I had been looking forward to that trip enormously. This time, I would be introducing Laureano to my culture, my history and a part of Europe that belonged to my own identity.
He already knew my daughter. We were spending Christmas time together, and the children had been introduced long before. There was no need for another formal presentation of the families. What I wanted now was to share something of my own world with them.
We were planning to travel with his two children and my daughter, who held a Polish passport but had never actually visited Poland.
I found that wonderfully amusing. My daughter was Polish by citizenship, yet Poland remained a country she had not seen. Laureano was Spanish, and his children were about to discover a part of Europe that was familiar and important to me.
I spoke the language. I knew the culture. I knew Kraków and had happy memories associated with the city. For once, I would not be the foreign woman trying to understand somebody else's customs. I would be the person who knew where we were going, what we were eating and why certain things mattered.
And there was our geographical joke.
Kraków belonged to the historical region of Galicja, a name pronounced much like the Spanish Galicia.
Laureano came from the Canary Islands, but he was, of course, familiar with Spain's Galicia. We found the coincidence delightful. Two regions at opposite ends of Europe, sharing almost the same name and very little of the same winter weather.
We were going to the cold Galicja. When we returned from Poland, it was already wrong Galicia.
I imagined Christmas lights, beautiful streets, Polish food, the children discovering new places and Laureano beside me, enjoying a country I wanted him to love.
I was excited by the prospect of showing him a part of myself that he had not yet experienced.
Our relationship had moved so quickly, but I did not experience that speed as recklessness. We were mature adults. We knew what we wanted. We had already begun sharing a home, household expenses and family arrangements. The future seemed to be taking shape almost effortlessly.
I had no reason to think that the next few weeks would change everything.
But that evening, sitting at home after the Spanish Christmas lunch, I knew nothing of what was coming.
I did not know about the three versions of the seating plan. I did not know about the warning Laureano would later describe. I did not know why his children had seemed so sad. I certainly did not imagine that a few months later I would be studying military correspondence and trying to establish whether the events of that December had been connected.
I was simply a woman in love, planning Christmas in the cold Galicja with a hot Canarian.
I did not know that, within a month, my Spanish doll's fairy tale would be over. La muñeca española would be broken and thrown away by people who had already decided she was less than human — and that among them would be the very man who had once held her in his arms and called her his Spanish doll.
And today's song - NUESTRAS NOCHES DE VERANO (simply because I miss summer and Barcelona)
It was a perfectly reasonable decision, considering that I was in an official relationship with a Spanish naval commander and I was formally invited, as his partner, to a Christmas lunch organised by the Spanish community at NATO's Allied Maritime Command. He has paid the dinner ticket for both of us, and the money has been accepted. In my lawyer’s world, it was a contract.
Two days earlier, as I said in the previous chapter, I had attended the NATO Christmas party at Northwood Headquarters. I had entered the military establishment through the ordinary visitor procedure, met some of Laureano's colleagues, spoken to his superior, Admiral Delgado, and returned home feeling rather pleased with myself. Friday passed quietly, without any reason to reconsider that impression. I was discovering my partner's world, meeting his people and doing precisely what I had wanted when, a few weeks earlier, we agreed that we should begin building a social life together.
For Saturday, I decided to make a greater effort.
I chose a black dress embroidered with red flowers, earrings inspired by Salvador Dalí's melting clocks and a hairstyle that, to my mind, looked suitably Spanish. I added a little fur muff, partly because it completed the outfit and partly because England in December is not the most hospitable environment for decorative femininity.
Laureano looked at me and smiled.
“Eres mi muñeca española.”
You are my Spanish doll.
I liked it. I was 48, a lawyer, a mother and a woman who had spent most of her adult life making decisions without consulting anybody's permission. I could afford the luxury of becoming somebody's doll for an afternoon. Particularly when the somebody in question was a handsome young man in his mid fifties with whom I was very much in love.
There was affection in the expression. There was playfulness. I had dressed for him, he had noticed, and we were going to spend the afternoon together.
I had no reason to look for any deeper meaning.
We collected his two children from the house where they lived with their mother and drove to Bushey. I was happy that they were coming with us. My daughter was not invited, as she did not yet belong to that social circle. I did not push for it, however I considered it, as I thought it would be a good experience for my daughter to blend into the Spanish culture, as she was the top student at the top Catholic college with Spanish being her strongest subject. But on that occasion we have decided to skip it. It appeared it was a wise decision, but I will tell the reader about it later.
As stated, our children had already met, and our relationship was moving beyond the private excitement of two adults who had fallen in love rather unexpectedly. We were beginning to arrange a shared family life, and I regarded that as a natural and welcome development.
The lunch was held in a marquee at a pub.
The marquee was unheated.
I mention this because, when reconstructing an event many months later, it is easy to become distracted by the alleged significance of conversations, social hierarchies and other people's possible intentions. At the time, however, my most immediate concern was the temperature. I was wearing a beautiful dress, not thermal underwear, and the organisers appeared to have confused the English winter with the Canary Islands.
The place was still relatively empty when we arrived. The tables had not yet been properly prepared. People stood in groups, talking to one another, while children moved around and the familiar noise of a community gathering gradually filled the space.
Laureano had colleagues to greet and conversations to attend to. I was left to entertain myself, which ordinarily presented no difficulty. I speak several languages, enjoy meeting people and have spent decades in situations requiring me to establish a working relationship with strangers. A Christmas lunch seemed a considerably less demanding assignment than most of my professional encounters.
So I approached a group of women.
They flocked away.
I approached another group. The conversation dissolved, and its participants found reasons to go elsewhere.
I tried again, with approximately the same result.
After several attempts, I began to feel like a border collie trying to herd sheep. Every time I approached the flock, the sheep scattered in different directions.
I found it rather funny at first. Perhaps my timing was unfortunate. Perhaps the women were busy. Perhaps there was some social convention I had failed to understand. I had not yet learned enough Spanish to follow their conversations properly, but I could smile, introduce myself and attempt the ordinary courtesies of civilised life. I had even learned to say ¡Encantada! (My sixth Spanish word (and second amongst the civil ones).
None of this seemed to work.
Eventually, I decided that the sheep could look after themselves.
I wanted a drink. A warm one.
I went outside the marquee, partly to look for Laureano and partly because I had become bored with the unsuccessful exercise of introducing myself to women who appeared determined not to be introduced.
There was a group of Spanish officers standing nearby, including Admiral Delgado, the only man I knew apart from Laureano.
In my cultural universe, approaching a group of men at a social gathering is a fairly straightforward operation. One says hello, joins the conversation and, sooner or later, somebody asks whether one would like a drink. This is not a matter of international law, although I suspect it has been observed more consistently than some international treaties.
I walked over and began talking.
I cannot remember the exact conversation. It was the ordinary social exchange one has while waiting for lunch: the weather, the occasion, a few pleasantries. I remember the officers seeming rather uncomfortable, although I had no idea why. Eventually, as I recall, Delgado asked whether I wanted something to drink.
At that moment, Laureano appeared out of thin air and said that he would get it for me.
And so he did.
I finally obtained a cup of mulled wine, said bye-bye to the officers and we went inside the marquee.
That was the extent of my adventure among the Spanish officers.
I would not normally devote so much attention to a conversation about nothing in particular, except that, much later, I encountered press accounts suggesting that I had asked officers inappropriate questions during the aperitifs.
The detail interested me.
The NATO Christmas party on Thursday had been a crowded gathering with national food stalls. There had been no comparable pre-lunch aperitif. My only substantial conversation with anybody other than Laureano had been with Delgado, and we had discussed Catholic Christmas traditions and food.
The Spanish lunch on Saturday, however, did have an aperitif. And I had indeed approached a group of officers.
Were the two events being confused?
Was the allegation supposed to refer to Saturday rather than Thursday?
And, if so, what exactly had I asked that was inappropriate?
I cannot establish from a newspaper account which conversation somebody had in mind, or whether the description was accurate. But I remember my encounter outside the marquee. I wanted a drink, I exchanged some pleasantries, and Laureano bought me mulled wine.
I have tried to identify the intelligence value of this operation.
So far, without success.
Even if Putin himself offered me a million roubles to identify the officers I approached that afternoon, I regret to say I would have to decline the offer.
I cannot remember their names.
I cannot remember their ranks.
Apparently, I was a spectacularly incompetent Russian spy.
We then waited for lunch. It seemed to take forever. Perhaps two hours passed before the organisers began arranging the dining area, bringing out folding tables, covering them with paper and placing folding chairs around them.
By then I was thoroughly cold. My feet were freezing, my bottom was freezing, and the elegant Spanish doll was beginning to regret not dressing as a Norwegian fisherman.
When everybody started taking their places, I discovered that there was no chair for me.
I looked at Laureano and made a joke, loudly enough for the people around us to hear (maybe it was not a joke, but a statement).
“Well, darling, I suppose I'll have to sit on your lap. At least I'll be warmer. My legs and my bottom are completely frozen.”
I thought it was a good solution. It was certainly cheaper than getting another chair.
The reaction was peculiar. People looked embarrassed, almost scandalised. I had no idea why a perfectly ordinary joke between two adults in love should produce such discomfort.
At that moment, Delgado walked past.
“Enrique,” I said in English, quite calmly, “am I going to get a chair?”
He assured me that I would and instructed somebody to bring one.
A chair appeared.
I did not think there was anything extraordinary about this exchange. I had grown up in a military family, where the commanding officer was responsible for the people under his command. If something went wrong and nobody else appeared to be dealing with it, one could ask the senior officer. Laureano was not responsible for organising the lunch or arranging the seating, and I had no idea who was. Delgado was the most senior officer present I knew. So I asked him.
I had been comfortable around senior military officers since childhood. I had sat on their knees, listened to their conversations and grown up in an environment where rank commanded respect but did not turn a man into a deity. A general or an admiral might command thousands of people, but he remained a human being in a social gathering, especially with kids and women.
And human beings could be asked perfectly ordinary questions.
Only much later, when I read Spanish press accounts describing my behaviour at that lunch as scandalous, did I begin to wonder whether this was the scandal they had in mind.
Perhaps addressing an admiral directly, by his first name, was regarded as an extraordinary breach of Spanish military etiquette. Perhaps a dehumanised woman in my inferior position was expected to wait quietly until somebody noticed that she had nowhere to sit. Perhaps the combination of the two was simply too much.
I do not know.
But I can see how the same exchange might have appeared very different to people operating within different assumptions about hierarchy and social standing.
In the military world of my childhood, a senior officer's authority carried responsibility. In the world I encountered that afternoon, I began to wonder whether authority was understood rather differently — as a distance that certain people were not supposed to cross.
And perhaps that was my scandal.
A woman whom some people apparently did not consider worthy of a place at the table had addressed the highest-ranking man present as an ordinary human being and asked him for a chair.
Not permission to enter a classified facility. Not access to military secrets.
A folding chair.
Anyway, I sat down, grateful at least to have somewhere to put my frozen bottom (and half-disappointed that I was not able to warm it up on Laureano’s lap).
The food was dreadful, but I was starving enough to enjoy it. I cannot say the same about the company.
I found myself seated between Simone, a Brazilian woman, and Pilar, the wife of a Spanish petty officer.
Simone was perfectly pleasant. Her partner, as I understood it, was also going through a divorce, and we had an entirely brief but normal conversation about immigration and other matters. We spoke in English. Her partner was quite friendly too. There was nothing remarkable about either interaction.
Pilar was different. She spent much of the meal with her back towards me, occasionally addressing me in Spanish when she wanted something passed across the table. I found this particularly curious because Pilar was an English teacher. Evidently, professional competence in a language does not necessarily imply a desire to use it socially.
Still, I did not consider this a major problem. I had no intention of forcing anybody to become my friend. If somebody preferred to communicate with me only when she needed the salt and call it la sal, that was her choice. My legitimate Spanish vocabulary was expanding at a significant rate of one word an hour.
Pilar's husband, Alex, was much more conversational.
At some point, I mentioned that I came from a family with naval traditions. My grandfather had been a naval officer and a pilot, and I had grown up with a particular familiarity with military social life. It seemed a natural subject to raise among naval people, although Alex was not especially interested in my family history.
He wanted to talk about Poland.
He was considering applying for a posting in Bydgoszcz, and this immediately gave us something to discuss.
I know Poland well. I spoke Polish. I had spent part of my youth there and regarded it as one of the countries that had shaped my identity. I was delighted to explain something about the place where he hoped to serve.
I also attempted to teach him how to pronounce Bydgoszcz.
This was probably the most entertaining moment of the entire lunch.
Polish has a magnificent ability to assemble consonants in combinations that appear designed to defeat the vocal apparatus of foreigners. Spanish is a beautiful language, but it does not adequately prepare its speakers for szcz.
Try teaching a Spaniard to pronounce Bydgoszcz and you will understand why I enjoyed myself.
That was our conversation. Poland, a possible military posting, my family's naval background and the pronunciation of a Polish city.
So there we sat at the table, me having some conversation with Alex, Simone and her partner, and Laureano keeping my frozen feet between his knees and massaging them from time to time to re-establish the circulation.
However, I could see that something was strange, but I could not identify a coherent reason for it.
Nor did I particularly want to spend my Christmas lunch conducting a psychological investigation into the Spanish naval community. I was a guest. I had come to enjoy myself. If some people did not want to speak to me, there were others who did.
I did not know that the question of where I should sit had already generated an unexpectedly elaborate documentary history.
I learned about it only on 16 June 2025, when Laureano forwarded me three emails from the previous December.
The first was dated 11 December 2024, at 12:56. It contained the original seating arrangements for the Spanish Christmas lunch.
According to Laureano's later account, due to his rank, we were initially supposed to sit at the senior table with Admiral Delgado.
The second email was sent the following morning, 12 December, at 08:22. It announced version 2.0 of the seating plan and explained that changes had been made only to tables six, seven and eight. It meant we were moved.
Then, at 17:17 that afternoon, came version 3.0. We were moved again.
By the time of the lunch, Laureano and I were seated with Simone, Pilar, Alex and the others, rather than at the senior table where, according to his account, we had originally been placed.
Military organisations have hierarchies, and their social arrangements often reflect those hierarchies. A table is not merely a piece of furniture when the guests are officers accustomed to recognising rank, seniority and position. Where one sits can communicate something about where one belongs.
I had no reason to think about any of this on 14 December. I had not seen the correspondence, and I was not familiar enough with that particular community to interpret its seating arrangements. As far as I was concerned, I had been invited to lunch with my partner and his children.
The significance of the three versions became more interesting when I learned about another event, which happened on 12 December 2025.
In a complaint subsequently prepared in Laureano's name, it was recorded that Captain David Fernández-Portal, Admiral Delgado’s aid, had summoned him that day and advised him not to attend the NATO Christmas party that day with me because it was too soon.
Laureano had refused.
According to the complaint, he was warned that he would face consequences.
I remember thinking about the timing.
On 11 December, we had apparently been allocated places at the senior table.
On the morning of 12 December, a revised seating plan was circulated.
That same day, according to Laureano's account, he was advised not to bring me to the NATO Christmas event and warned of consequences when he refused.
At 17:17, a third seating plan was circulated.
At 17.17 I was travelling to Northwood in a taxi, entirely unaware that the Spanish community had been rearranging its Christmas tables. I was excited about the party, looking forward to seeing Laureano and anticipating a pleasant evening.
I had no idea that the position of my chair at Saturday's lunch might have become a matter of social significance and linked to my attendance at the MARCOM event at Northwood.
The organiser, Major Christian Revidiego, evidently possessed a sense of humour. In the correspondence, complaints about the seating arrangements were directed towards imaginary Christmas authorities. By version 3.0, dissatisfied guests were invited to address their grievances to Santa Claus's complaints department.
I found this delightful.
Looking back, I wonder whether Santa Claus's Complaints Department was the one institution I had overlooked. I subsequently submitted complaints to NATO and the British and Spanish Ministries of Defence, both individually and jointly with Laureano, without obtaining the recognition of our grievances that we had sought.
Perhaps I had simply been writing to the wrong authorities all along.
Perhaps Santa Claus would have been more responsive.
Anyway, where we go - three versions of a seating plan, two days of administrative activity, and a fictional complaints mechanism presided over by Santa Claus.
What the documents do not establish, by themselves, is why each change was made or whether the warning and the seating arrangements were connected.
Nevertheless, the question is difficult to resist.
When Laureano was told that he would face consequences, what exactly was meant?
Did it mean that a Spanish commander who insisted on bringing his new partner to a Christmas party would lose his place at the admiral's table?
Was the intended punishment merely to seat him among sailors and petty officers, leaving his Spanish doll / Red Sparrow to negotiate the acquisition of a folding chair?
Or did the word consequences already refer to something more serious?
Six months later, Laureano would find himself facing restrictions affecting his access to his workplace and suspension of his security status. My own access to Northwood would become the subject of official decisions, correspondence, complaints and litigation.
It is tempting, knowing what happened later, to imagine that somebody had already designed the entire sequence in December.
But I cannot say that.
I do not know whether the people involved in the December 2024 events anticipated what would happen in June 2025. I do not know whether the seating changes were intended as punishment or humiliation. I do not even know whether the missing chair was connected to the seating revisions or was simply the product of poor organisation.
The lawyer in me insists on these distinctions.
The woman who spent that afternoon freezing in a marquee in Bushey is nevertheless entitled to wonder.
There was also another Christmas joke whose significance would become apparent much later.
Gorrión Rojo.
Red Sparrow.
By the autumn of 2026, Spanish press accounts would describe that nickname as something used about me within the MARCOM environment. It was a strange development for a woman who had spent the relevant December evenings discussing Catholic food traditions, looking for mulled wine and teaching a Spanish petty officer to pronounce the name of a Polish city.
I wondered what the joke was supposed to mean.
The Santa Claus joke was easy enough to understand. Somebody had made a light-hearted comment about the inconvenience of changing tables.
The Red Sparrow nickname was rather different. It invoked a fictional Russian intelligence operative, with all the sexual and political associations attached to that image.
Perhaps some people regarded it as harmless humour. Perhaps others took it more seriously. The available accounts do not allow me to reconstruct who first used the expression, what they intended or how it travelled.
But the contrast stayed with me.
One joke concerned the administrative problem of placing people at tables. The other concerned the identity of a woman who had never been asked whether she recognised herself in the description.
I had arrived as Laureano's Spanish doll. I accepted it on that day.
Somewhere beyond my hearing, according to later accounts, another character had begun to take shape.
A Red Sparrow. I never accepted it. I never will.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder whether that was the real cultural misunderstanding. I had imagined that being introduced into a community meant becoming a participant in it. I expected conversations, introductions, ordinary curiosity and perhaps the beginning of friendships.
Instead, I encountered people who appeared to imagine something about me that I did not imagine about myself.
I cannot establish what each person believed or why particular women avoided me. I can only describe their behaviour as I experienced it. Nor was the hostility universal. Simone spoke to me normally, as did her partner and Alex. That difference is important. It prevents me from reducing an entire community to a single collective intention.
Yet the atmosphere was unmistakably uncomfortable.
It was as though I had arrived at a social event after some conversation had already taken place, and everybody else knew its subject.
Except me.
By the time we returned home that Saturday, I was thoroughly frozen. My elegant outfit had survived, although my enthusiasm for Spanish outdoor hospitality had suffered a little. The lunch had been disappointing, the food dreadful, and I had failed rather spectacularly to make friends with most of the Spanish women.
Still, I was happy.
I had spent two days meeting people from Laureano's professional world. I had attended a NATO Christmas party, accompanied him to a Spanish family gathering and spent time with his children. These were the ordinary milestones of a relationship becoming serious. I remembered stories of my grandma about her making up with my grandad’s friends and colleagues. She managed so I would.
I had no reason to believe that the awkwardness of one lunch should alter our plans.
I did notice that his children were unusually quiet afterwards.
They seemed sad, subdued, almost withdrawn. I could not understand why. I had spent much of the afternoon trying to make conversation with adults, and I had not followed everything happening among the children.
Months later, Laureano would tell me that he believed his children had also been treated unfairly at the lunch. He would subsequently describe their experience as discriminatory.
But I did not know that on 14 December.
I noticed their sadness without understanding its possible cause.
My attention was already turning towards something much more exciting.
In a week's time, we were going to Kraków.
I had been looking forward to that trip enormously. This time, I would be introducing Laureano to my culture, my history and a part of Europe that belonged to my own identity.
He already knew my daughter. We were spending Christmas time together, and the children had been introduced long before. There was no need for another formal presentation of the families. What I wanted now was to share something of my own world with them.
We were planning to travel with his two children and my daughter, who held a Polish passport but had never actually visited Poland.
I found that wonderfully amusing. My daughter was Polish by citizenship, yet Poland remained a country she had not seen. Laureano was Spanish, and his children were about to discover a part of Europe that was familiar and important to me.
I spoke the language. I knew the culture. I knew Kraków and had happy memories associated with the city. For once, I would not be the foreign woman trying to understand somebody else's customs. I would be the person who knew where we were going, what we were eating and why certain things mattered.
And there was our geographical joke.
Kraków belonged to the historical region of Galicja, a name pronounced much like the Spanish Galicia.
Laureano came from the Canary Islands, but he was, of course, familiar with Spain's Galicia. We found the coincidence delightful. Two regions at opposite ends of Europe, sharing almost the same name and very little of the same winter weather.
We were going to the cold Galicja. When we returned from Poland, it was already wrong Galicia.
I imagined Christmas lights, beautiful streets, Polish food, the children discovering new places and Laureano beside me, enjoying a country I wanted him to love.
I was excited by the prospect of showing him a part of myself that he had not yet experienced.
Our relationship had moved so quickly, but I did not experience that speed as recklessness. We were mature adults. We knew what we wanted. We had already begun sharing a home, household expenses and family arrangements. The future seemed to be taking shape almost effortlessly.
I had no reason to think that the next few weeks would change everything.
But that evening, sitting at home after the Spanish Christmas lunch, I knew nothing of what was coming.
I did not know about the three versions of the seating plan. I did not know about the warning Laureano would later describe. I did not know why his children had seemed so sad. I certainly did not imagine that a few months later I would be studying military correspondence and trying to establish whether the events of that December had been connected.
I was simply a woman in love, planning Christmas in the cold Galicja with a hot Canarian.
I did not know that, within a month, my Spanish doll's fairy tale would be over. La muñeca española would be broken and thrown away by people who had already decided she was less than human — and that among them would be the very man who had once held her in his arms and called her his Spanish doll.
And today's song - NUESTRAS NOCHES DE VERANO (simply because I miss summer and Barcelona)
