There is no better prize for the Madrilenian than to be able to go to a place with the sea.
That happened to me the day after the elections.
A bit congested, due to the explosive combination of white wine and mezcal shared with my neighbors, my husband, who is the best candidate in the world, had scheduled a shoot in Altea for a program on Valencian television.
And there we went.
All the trip thinking about what it is to be from Madrid, yes, because both Rubén and I are happily adopted by the town, we were not born in it but we are part of it.
This is what Madrid does with those of us who live there: we are chosen, accepted.
Mutated
And we are rewarded with an escape to Altea to enjoy the beautiful Mediterranean in May.
My husband, that candidate to share lifelong happiness, once again insisted that I don't do well when it comes to politics. He confessed to me that he has been exchanging
for
days
about Bill Gates's alleged lover of Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese translator and that, according to that television network called Fox News, owned by another magnate, Rupert Murdoch, would be the cause of the divorce of Melinda Gates and Bill Gates. A 36-year-old translator from Chinese to English with a past as a Delta Airlines flight attendant! This is more interesting than any electoral campaign without debates. First for speaking the two Chinese languages. Let us remember when we were informed, in a gesture of informative transparency, that Princess Eleanor would learn Mandarin Chinese apart from English and we all said,
wow, that's the
way it should be, that's the road, the silk road. Well, that's the toll, you have to know Cantonese and Mandarin otherwise you don't advance, you don't conquer the Chinese giant. Not even Bill Gates will mark a
First Dates
with you. Of course the lady in question, Shelley Wang, has pointed out to Fox News that she was messing around. But then an old girlfriend of Gates, Anne Wynbled, appears, who drops that the mega magnate had an "unusual" relationship with her, which would have the approval of Melinda, the official wife. Wynbled and Bill had known each other since before the marriage and would have maintained an agreement to continue seeing each other, despite or with the approval of their marriages. A small toll on a great journey.
I love these deals. My point of view is that if Bill and Melinda became mega-millionaires with deals like this, my husband and I and the rest of the world might prosper at similar tolls. It may sound a little old-fashioned but fidelity is a middle-class trauma, a brake. As the world becomes more and more liberal, it seems important to move away from the tastes of the middle class. And try, as far as possible, to manage an evolution towards being a tycoon who divorces 30 years later and also makes money with that divorce. In other words, loyalty is a thing for losers. And the gain is in maintaining a troubled river of old and new loves. And may the best candidate win.
The daring Pilar Eyre has just published in
Lecturas
the waste in the maintenance of the palace of La Zarzuela, where among its few inhabitants are the queen emerita and her beloved single sister. Some friends were scandalized by this type of institutional toll but I thought about the sad fate of some palaces and their heritage. For one reason or another, they always end up abandoned or visited by Chinese tourists or excited onlookers as has happened twice this month at Windsor Palace. A psychologist told me that these kinds of unexpected visits and presences occur, perhaps, because nothing gives more sadness than a defeated candidate or an empty palace.