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Falsifying reality is now so common that we could say we are in the age of appearances.

Padding your resume is like sucking in your stomach for a photo op. In reality, you're only fooling yourself, and when you can't hold your breath anymore, it provokes more pity than shame. It's a small sin of vanity that only lasts a short time , but on the other hand, it doesn't cause major damage to the furniture.

Many of those who have joined Noelia Núñez's hunting party because they fabricated their knowledge have little legitimacy to do so. For example, José Zaragoza, a man who has been making a living off politics for forty years without any qualifications and who spends his time cutting and pasting party slogans every morning, shamelessly attacked Noelia for wanting to do the same thing as him and Little Nicolás. That is, not live for politics, but live off of politics.

It's not so much that Noelia's behavior is criticized, which she deserves, that matters, but rather the disproportionate criticism and, above all, the double standard applied. That feeling that drives us to see the speck in someone else's eye and ignore the beam in our own. Falsifying reality is becoming so commonplace that it's already part of the culture of appearances to which we have subscribed. You only have to take a look at social media to see it.

One of the things that most caught the attention of anyone who landed on Twitter ten years ago was the number of profiles of young, highly attractive people presenting themselves as aerospace engineers, professors of quantum physics, or some other impressive qualification. Almost all of them had around 20,000 followers, but when you delved deeper into who these prodigies were following, it turned out that figures of the caliber of Juan Carlos Monedero appeared at the top. And at that moment, the feeling of unease was inevitable, like when María felt the urge on Tinder for that interesting businessman who emerged from the shadows in the photo, and when you finally meet him, it turns out he's the local greengrocer.

Anyone who has landed on TikTok will be able to see young people pontificating about climate change as if they were Carl Sagan, with four facts previously collected from ChapGPT. Someone who presented himself as a Galician lawyer, but who turned out to be a socialist activist, proposed, in the wake of Noelia's case, that a crime for lying on a public official's resume be included in the criminal code.

It's about time! I'm not saying no, but if we're going to change the penal code, perhaps there are other priorities, such as reinstating the crime of sedition and once again punishing corruption as it deserves, starting with embezzlement. And if we're going to penalize, why not punish lying in general? Lying and those changes of opinion, which are also lies with a twist.

Noelia and so many others should be told that not having finished school or having a college degree isn't a disabling condition. What is disabling is wanting to pass for something you're not. You can be talented and not have a degree. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College, both almost without setting foot in the classroom, because they had enormous projects on the horizon that required effort. So did Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, Anna Wintour , and, in Spain, Amancio Ortega .

What's the difference between these and, for example, Patxi López, Miguel Iceta, or now Noelia Núñez, who also dropped out of school? The latter did so to pursue a career in politics, understood as a shortcut. The art of using people by making them believe they're being served. Steve Jobs, in his speech at Stanford in 2005, said, "Don't lose your hunger, don't lose your curiosity." I don't remember him saying anything about his resume. I recommend that anyone who doesn't know how to play mus learn to play this summer. In the last game, my friend José said that a politician's salary should be the same as his last salary in his private life, within limits. And my friend Ángel replied, "Okay, but if you're going to take a risk, make sure you have cards."

Iñaki Garay, Deputy Director of Expansion