In any era of the increasingly convoluted history of humanity, there has never been a lack of heroes, villains or impostors. And the 21st century, far from being an exception to the rule, promises to present posterity not only with a few heroes and villains, but with plenty of frauds, especially politicians, of the highest order.
One of the favorite aspirations of the faker is to set himself up as a false prophet without anyone -or very few- noticing his fraud. The most convincing have even gone so far as to found a religion with millions of fervent followers willing to govern their lives in accordance with the absurd requirements of the founding impostor, in addition to contributing funds to the heavenly enterprise.
Some still await the arrival of the Messiah, while others place their faith that one day a king who disappeared in battle will return, as is the case of King Sebastián I of Portugal, who supposedly fell dead in Alcazarquiver in 1578, but that one day he will return, although not exactly like Jan Julivert.
If, depending on how you look at it, it may seem peculiar that more than half a dozen of the twenty-seven Member States of the European Union are parliamentary monarchies, it may be even more difficult to recognize that there are also claimants to the crown of several full-fledged republics, for example, Italy, France, Greece, Romania or Bulgaria. There are enough Carlists left in Spain to agitate even more the always stormy waters of politics at the national, regional, provincial level and even those of the humblest village abandoned to its fate by the promised progress that always passes it by like a mister’s car. Marshall.
Nor is there a shortage of leaders willing to do anything to recover an idealized lost empire, with Putin at the top of the podium that he shares with the Turkish Erdogan, who dreams of recovering Ottoman power, and, in third place, the United Kingdom, which deceived itself thinking that Brexit was going to restore the empire lost after winning two world wars, only to discover that it is very cold outside the EU or that the Commonwealth is nothing more than a private club in which to wear colorful traditional costumes and have a few drinks between friends, if they existed, given that the British have always put their interests before any show of friendship.
On the death of Richard II in 1400, despite the fact that his corpse was paraded from town to town across half of England, the Scots brought up an impostor who they presented as the true king and not the deceased. It goes without saying that the ruse did not work, as has happened in so many other similar cases throughout Europe.
A separate case is that of a Russian priest who managed to be taken for the son and heir of Ivan IV, Dimitri, who at first was believed to have been eliminated by the future Tsar Boris Gudanov. The false Dimitri farce lasted ten months, which after all is not bad.
Recently, a young Polish woman claimed to be Madeleine McCann, the girl who disappeared without a trace many years ago in a tourist spot in the Algarve. It is still too early to know if it will be possible to verify her identity as that of the kidnapped girl. But if his claim is successful, he could soon be reunited with his real parents, without having to wait as long as the right-handed Manuel Díaz “El Cordobés”, who on Valentine’s Day was finally recognized as the son of his father Manuel Benítez “El Cordobés”. .
It is possible to suspect that Donald Trump is nothing more than an impostor who against all odds won the presidential elections of the United States of America in 2016. In the event that he won them again in 2024, he would occupy the podium of the greatest impostor in history alone, making a fool of Putin, Erdogan and Co.
Well, anything can be expected in this period of accelerated transit in which plain intelligence gives way to artificial intelligence, an oxymoron where they exist. Or that a former communist of almost 90 years presents a motion of censure against the Government of Spain at the request of Vox, a far-right party. Or that Carles Puigdemont returns -and soon- to preside over a non-existent Catalan republic. Or that Barça is more than a club. Or what…
