Abdera is today a deeply archaeological archaeological site, but in the golden age of Greece, about two and a half thousand years ago, it was a famous city. Located south of the Thrace region, on the shores of the Aegean Sea, two great philosophers appear among their hair: Democrite and his disciple Protágoras, both contemporaries of Socrates.

But if someone tells you in German that you are an abderite, don't think you're a philosophy star, because now in German it's called an abderatí or an idiot. The word "owes" an insulting sense to a long novel and on its famous day, 1774. Christoph Martin Wieland is the author of the play, and the title of the novel in Basque would be Abderatarren kondairaq (Geschichten der Abderiten).

In a record between irony and satire, the novel narrates how the authorities of Abderita, in which a civil war occurred for a useless one, ended the country. In the first episode, there is a useless anecdote that will later lead to Abdera’s collapse.

In the vast region of Abdera, Struthion is the only dentist. There are many villages around, and each village organizes a large market a year. In the market, our man would not only appear there with the dust and dye of his teeth, but also with all the miraculous drugs loaded in his esteemed drunkenness.

On this occasion, however, on the eve of his departure, Struthion had been raised by drunkenness and had no means of transport. He had to rent another donkey and agree that the donkey was going to be his partner, an donkey. It was a udamine, and our dentist was overwhelmed in a donkey. As in the view you saw everything that could obscure a tree or a tree, Struthion stopped, pulled out of his ass and tended in the shadow of his donkey. But as soon as they had gone to bed, the ass began to pay attention to the donkey being only in the treatment and to the shadow being paid separately. In vain he tried to explain to him that the donkey and the shadow went together, that the donkey had already paid the shadow, because the donkey, in his anger, had remained firm. Faced with the impossibility of resolving the case among them, they have returned to Abdera and decided to put the resolution in the hands of the court. There they have been touched by an eccentric judge incapable of deciding anything, and the fight ends up becoming a civil war. The political parties in Abdera are divided into two factions: one of those who claim that the shadow belongs to the donkey, and another of those who believe that the shadow and donkey are two independent entities.

In Germany, about 30 years ago, I had news of the Abderite legends. Since then I have not remembered much of them again, until the political atmosphere of recent times has brought me back to my memory. I realized, as in a bad dream, the connection between the abderites and us.

The donkey was the way of life that those of the first world wish for us, and the shadow the consequences that this causes on the rest of the worlds (International Monetary Fund, attack on Charlie Hebdo, Marine Le Pen...). If we were an abderite, we would be sides that said that the shadows had nothing to do with the donkey, but the reverse: the shadow worries us and we would be willing to pay the solution, but without the donkey that we live in the sleek barn entering the deal.

It's not Prothagoras' sentence, it's our proverb, and it's not an ass. “Whoever wants a shaded horse, let me know on foot.”