women of the week

Thanks to the Alan Turing awards in tribute to the extraordinary gay scientist, which are awarded at the Culture & Business Pride festival in Tenerife, I have shared the stage with that new icon of diversity that is Samantha Hudson.

It's not the first time we've met, but it's the first time we've talked and delved a little deeper.

I forgot to mention that we both missed the Dior show in Seville to find ourselves in this stimulating chat.

The debate that brought us together was about the limits between creativity and the market, how far you can be yourself when commercial success knocks at your door and at what cost.

That crossroads where you have to choose between taking the dusty path of the massive or reigning entrenched in the alternative.

Something that can happen to the young Samantha, fully incorporated into the

but tempted by the machinery of mass culture.

That can be seen as an opportunity.

In my case, when that happened —I recognized it in the debate— I spread my legs and gave myself up to be phagocytosed as much as that machinery wanted.

I'm still not clear on what I lost in the process, but I felt it was my obligation to convey to Samantha the idea that she do the same.

She, who still prefers to maintain purity, looked at me sideways and let out a: "Sold".

I laughed both relieved and grateful that someone had summed up my truth in public.

Samantha Hudson unhurriedly disarms but advances without pause.

She has tasted the taste of commercial television participating in

and going to

, behaving on both occasions as alternative as open TV can bear.

Her deliberate look, more

glamor than

, baffles some as she debates with herself how much longer she can sustain this tug-of-war.

When we had entered this existential core, our talk was joined by the members of the musical political collective Pussy Riot, the first Russian women who confronted Putin in his totalitarian drift and taught the rest of the world the danger that it implied.

Like Alan Turing, they were convicted and imprisoned;

one of them, Maria Alyokhina (

, still wears an electronic ankle bracelet.

In an improvised mixture of Spanish, English and Russian, they managed to open our eyes about how important freedom is, something that you don't value well until you lose it.

Whether you are super alternative or super commercial, without it you are little.

French actress Marion Cotillard during the rehearsal of 'Joana de Arco en la hoguera', at the Royal Theater in Madrid.

Living in a city as materialistic and dry as Madrid has changed my life and has turned me into what

calls "the king of

", just like the king emeritus, I do not consider it necessary to give any explanation.

On Tuesday I saw a martyr, Joan of Arc at the Teatro Real, with a splendid performance by Marion Cotillard, a success of Joan Matabosch's programming.

The next day I could not miss the Alex Katz exhibition at the Thyssen museum, where Borja Thyssen and Blanca Cuesta were received as new hosts, both dressed as if they had come out of one of the paintings.

the

It reminded me that two months have not passed since my cardiovascular intervention.

I also talked about that with Carolina Herrera while we had dinner.

At the exit of the restaurant we were surprised by the cameras of some reporters, who collected the perfect statements of Mrs. Herrera.

The moment was a master's degree in social communication on a sidewalk in Madrid, in which Carolina defended herself with precision and hands in her pockets from the inquisitive pink press.

I would have liked to sprinkle and share some of that

with Samantha and the Pussy Riot during our debate in Tenerife.

How good education can make it easier and more accurate to surf the bristling waves of free enterprise.