Carlos Peguer, coauthor of the podcast La pija y la quinqui and influencer, has fulfilled his dream at 27 years old of buying an apartment in Chamberí, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Madrid. It is a 60-square-meter apartment, with exposed brick, wooden beams, and small balconies that fill it with light. It cost so much that he didn’t dare to tell his parents the price. That doesn’t mean he can’t afford it: he and his co-founder in the podcast, Mariang Maturana, have starred in one of the most spectacular sudden success stories of recent times, and have managed to monetize it by advertising for brands on their social media. In a few weeks, and at 22 years old, they went from sharing their love dramas in her kitchen to entering the list of the most listened-to podcasts in Spain. The episode with Pedro Sánchez was key in their campaign, bringing him closer to young voters, and they have interviewed Rosalía and Almodóvar. Despite his obvious intelligence (or rather, thanks to it), Peguer is clear that he doesn’t deserve it, that dreams don’t always come true, that he was able to acquire it because of his privileged position, and that he has been very lucky. “I have worked to get here, but just like all my friends, family, and acquaintances who put in hundreds of hours a week in offices and in front of the public, and I don’t deserve it even a bit more,” he said on Instagram. In the video where he shows the house, he denounces a crazy real estate market that “needs to be intervened.” His announcement has been widely debated on social media this week, and reactions range from joy (“we have made the right people famous”) to surprise that fame and money only get you so few square meters, and with a mortgage on top.
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In a text published on Substack, and more intimately, Peguer confesses the anxiety caused by something that should excite him immensely. He does not have the support of a wealthy family, and he still has a 30-year debt ahead. He coins a concept that seems key to me to understand not only what has happened to him but also the economic and emotional instability of a world that has changed, and that even affects its winners: the social Dragon Khan. “We have always been told that the social elevator doesn’t exist, but I think our internet has created something similar to the social Dragon Khan: a roller coaster that allows you to get to a slightly higher point quickly and easily, only to bring you back to the starting point.” He estimates he has about five years left to go down.
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In her newly published essay Hijos del optimismo (Debate, 2026), María Álvarez explains what he practices: that influencers are the new entrepreneurs of the system because they dominate a world that much of society, anchored to the material economy, no longer understands, which causes their resentment. For the author, the discourse of meritocracy, useful for much of history and especially during the Industrial Revolution, is in this century a deadly trap because it has stopped working. In a world that changes so fast, striving “means blocking intuition, ignoring environmental signals, and persisting in what one is doing, even if it has become obsolete.” Peguer, with his brilliant linguistic insight, is very aware of this change. When neither winning the lottery nor reaching the top of your profession guarantees being able to buy a good apartment without worries, it means even our dreams have changed.
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