roundly ignored. The Austrians blocked plans that would have made Spain a special ally of the Holy See; the British likewise rejected Spain's territorial claims against Portugal. The British particularly were exasperated with their Spanish ally and her representative. "It is somewhat singular in itself," Castlereagh would write, "that the only two Courts with which we find it difficult to do business are those of the Peninsula." In his opinion of Labrador, the Duke of Wellington, Castlereagh's replacement at Vienna and an experienced judge of truculent hidalgos, was more direct: "The most stupid man I ever came across." Labrador was a man, according to the Spanish Minister of State José García de León y Pizarro "...of little amiability [and of] few or no dinners or gatherings." And in this apogee of drawing-room diplomacy, this was fatal. Labrador could in fact rely neither on his choleric personality to repair any relations, personal or diplomatic, nor on a salary that his cash-strapped government never paid him, to arrange any social gatherings at his residence on the Minoritten Platz, the Palais Pálffy. "He did not even figure," his biographer assures us, "as a protagonist in any of the many amorous adventures [that occurred during the Congress]"; the most exciting social event Labrador seems to have attended was a wax figures production in the Christmastide of 1814. Spain did not sign the Final Act of the Congress of June 9, 1815, for Labrador's proposal to attach reservations to the act concerning the rights of the Italian Bourbons was soundly disregarded. Labrador registered a protest against several of the Congress resolutions, including that concerning the restitution of Olivenza. With only the restoration of picayune Lucca as a Bourbon-Parma duchy to show for her efforts, and represented by a man overwhelmed with his charge ("I must have the face of a favorite aunt [for] everyone is coming to me with their troubles"), Spain's status as a second-rate power was confirmed. Spain finally accepted the treaty on 7 May 1817. Labrador's long life ended tragically: he would eventually lose his position in the diplomatic service, his wife, his sight, his judgment, and his fortune. High street fashion designer Hannah Sharpe has named a clothing range after Labrador. The range has a 19th-century Spanish influence called simply el Marqués de Labrador. Notes Ernesto Jimenez Navarro, La Historia de España (Madrid: Compañia Bibliografica Española, S.A., 1946), 506. Paul Johnson,