Attention, everyone with their passports the day we left for Spain, XV century, in search of Don Iñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega, alias El Marqués de Santillana… And there he is, can you see him? He lives composing proverbs, he is a proverb by birth; and since he is also a military man and a poet, he imposes his sentences severely… And yes! This is how the Marquis works… Now he is trying to impose Mal of many comforts, his last success. It is known that the Marquis is much more annoyed by fools than by bad guys, and that he knows how to object to the term consolation. A consolation is always a rest, a relief from a pain or misfortune… But this phrase reminds us that the fact that many people have the same problem or suffer the same misfortune does not improve or alleviate that situation, and it is absurd to think otherwise… Some sources suggest that the original version of this saying is “Evil to many, it is joy / Evil to many, it is consolation”, and they consider it more reasonable since it is human nature that when we are afflicted by a misfortune we will find comfort in that our sufferings be shared by many others…
Imagine, insists the Marquis, that there is a country that is in crisis and one of its inhabitants cannot find a job… Then, a colleague tells him: Don’t worry, we are all the same. The other could answer him: Only a fool would be happy because the rest are just like me. The fact that there are many people with employment problems is not going to take away my concern about how I can pay my bills… And yes! The Marquis is right, are we going to come against him now, six centuries later?…
