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that nobody has ever bothered to corroborate, weigh up, analyse or check. The specialization of a mediocre educational system creates mediocrity and sows fields of ignorance, thus favouring the spread of mental disorder and confusion. Amongst this stew of de-contextualised concepts, it is easy to become the pray of swindlers and tricksters. These predatory chameleons, scavenger charlatans, spread like crabs in a brothel in their search for an audience. They aren´t much more intelligent than the majority, but perhaps more quick-witted. Moreover, the conformism that is infecting a large part of our stages is amazing: a soft-touch approach that is more dumb than indulgent, ripe for deceit, whose widespread presence does nothing but provide tasty titbits to the tricksters. They are the children of the great lie of democracy – and may it be said that if I make this allusion it is not because I am not interested in the term and its meaning, as magnanimous as it is unlikely, it is because it is an enormous pipe dream. They are full of opinions but lacking in information, a generation whose biggest defect lies in not what they don’t know (which is a lot), but being conscious of it. A real shame that would be solved by educating oneself a little, even if it is at the hands of the already threadbare system of free education that is left in many cities in the country, in this wonderful country in which nobody reads and thus, doesn’t learn. Many repeat what others say because they were told by people who had heard what somebody had heard from someone else. This is how ‘popular knowledge’ is created, a common source of unfounded knowledge, a fount of coincidences from which divinely inspired science springs, to run to a puddle full of frogs, each more garrulous and loud-mouthed than the last. Out of every ten heads in Spain, one thinks and nine charge Antonio Machado This is the case in this world of ‘artists’ and ‘famous people’, which attracts swarms of wannabes sniffing around, considering themselves serious candidates worthy of renown and celebrity, just for proclaiming themselves artists. So much arrogance, yet so little instruction! It is a flea circus where everything moves, but there is actually nothing to be seen. There are people that see what they want to see, even though it doesn’t exist. The music plays and the trapeze swings, but it is all an illusion, a vain mirage moved with honeyed strings that the flies, attracted by the sweetness, alight on and become stuck. In this ridiculous way, some people sweet-talk others by getting the vain man to take the bait of flattery, or the gullible man to take the bait of confusion. As my grandmother used to say, ‘there’s a lid for every pot!’ Luisa Noriega One gloomy silent night, Passed a frightful lion With a careful kingly step though a jungle; Hearing a noisy voice, with continued booming tone, Drew the ear and mind of the animal king, who knew not From which ferocious beast could come the voice, when all around was silent. His Lion Majesty the jungle thoroughly sought; But in the inky night found nought Until he spied surprise! In a morning pond such ferocious beast And it was a frog. Many people will be drawn to the charlatan and his madness: But what will be when at the end, The wise see that he is but a frog, all mouth? The Lion and the Frog Felix María de Samaniego Pietro Longhi. El charlatán / The blatherer , 1757 Ca’Rezzonico, Palacio-museo del siglo XVIII veneciano, Venecia. 123